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THE SOUL OF LEE 




GENERAL ROBERT E. LEE 



THE SOUL OF LEE 



£y ONE OF HIS SOLDIERS 

RANDOLPH H. McKIM 

ii 

Late ist Lieutenant and A. D. C. Brig.-Gen. Geo. H. Steuart's Brigade, 

Major-Gen. Edward Johnson's Division, Ewell's Corps 

Army of Northern Virginia 



If ever man made his life a true poem it was Lee." 
— Gamaliel Bradford. 



LONGMANS, GREEN AND CO. 

FOURTH AVENUE & 30th STREET, NEW YORK 
39 PATERNOSTER ROW, LONDON 

BOMBAY, CALCUTTA, AND MADRAS 
1918 



Copyright, 191 7, 
By R. H. McKIM 



JAN -5 1918 



^ClA4813::i: 



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TO 

THE SURVIVORS OF THE ARMY 

OF NORTHERN VIRGINIA 

THIS PICTURE OF OUR GREAT COMMANDER 

IS AFFECTIONATELY DEDICATED 



PREFACE 



The purpose of this little volume is to give in brief 
compass an epitome of the life and the campaigns of 
General Robert E. Lee, with sufficient detail, how- 
ever, to convey a true impression of his genius as a 
soldier and his exalted character as a man. The 
author believes that at this crisis when our young 
men are oflfering their strength and their Hves in the 
greatest struggle for liberty and democracy the world 
has ever seen, a study of the life and character of 
Lee cannot but be an inspiration. For the great 
Southern leader was more than a Southerner — he 
was an American ; * and the time has come when the 
whole country may take an honest pride in his military 
genius and in the high ideals which governed him in 
his campaigns, while the study of those campaigns 
may well arouse the emulation of the young soldiers 
of our new national army as they mark the splendid 
valor and constancy of the men who fought in both 
the Union and the Confederate armies more than fifty 
years ago. 

It will at once be seen that these pages do not 
aspire to the dignity of a biography of the illustrious 

* Mr. Gamaliel Bradford, a writer of rare insight, hita- 
self a man of old New England stock, has shown his per- 
ception of this fact by giving his biography the title "Lee the 
American." 

vii 



viii PREFACE 

man who is their subject, — yet they are more than 
an appreciation or a eulogy. They give, I hope, a 
true outhne of Lee's life, a reliable sketch of his 
campaigns, and a just, if inadequate, impression of 
his character. They are based upon a painstaking 
study of his career, and it is believed the picture they 
present is historically accurate. May I point out 
to any who may think it too highly colored, that it 
has been painted chiefly with materials taken from 
other easels than my own — competent writers and 
critics, in large part Northern men and Europeans. 

It will also be recognized that, while all who write 
of Lee must needs draw from substantially the same 
sources, yet there are in this narrative not a few inci- 
dents which are quite unfamiliar, and others which 
have never been published before. 

I do not forget in what I have said above that it 
may be thought that the magnitude of the world con- 
flict now waging so dwarfs the battles and the cam- 
paigns of half a century ago that the student of war 
today can learn little or nothing from them; but 
on the other hand Gen. Sir Frederick B. Maurice 
has told us that war is waged today on the same 
great principles of strategy practiced by Napoleon 
and Lee. And though the methods and the instru- 
ments of war are so vastly changed since 1861, yet 
there are likenesses as well as contrasts between the 
two, — and the most vital factor of war, the spirit of 
man himself, has never changed since the days of 
Joshua and Judas Maccabeus. 

I will only add that I desire to make my own the 



PREFACE IX 

words of the author of that charming Httle volume, 
A Rebel's Recollections: 

"Will the reader please bear in mind that my 
estimate of the character of the Southern troops is a 
positive and not a comparative one, and that nothing 
said in praise of the one army is meant to be a reflec- 
tion on the other. Between Bull Run and Appo- 
mattox I had ample opportunity to learn respect for 
the courage and manliness of the men who overcame 
us." (Geo. Gary Eggleston.) 

The frontispiece is reproduced from the portrait 
at Washington and Lee University by kind permis- 
sion of the President of the University. The 
original is known as the " Pine Tree Portrait." 



TABLE OF CONTENTS 



PAGE 

I. Ancestry, Birth and Early Years 3 

II. Lee in the Service of the U. S. Army 13 

III. The Soul of Lee in the Great Crisis of His Life 25 

IV. Lee as a Master of Offensive Strategy 41 

V. Lee as a Master of Defensive Strategy 69 

VI. Lee in the Siege of Petersburg 81 

VII. The Soul of Lee in Disaster 95 

VIII. Lee and the Army of Northern Virginia 117 

IX. Glimpses of Lee's Army i35 

X. Numerical Strength of the Confederate 

Army 155 

XL Lee after the Surrender 177 

XII. Lee's Spiritual Life 195 

Appendix: 

The Gettysbuig Campaign 213 

xi 



I 

ANCESTRY, BIRTH AND EARLY YEARS 



^' The fatherlands of Sidney and Bayard never pro- 
duced a nobler soldier, gentleman and Christian than 
Gen. Robert E. Lee." — London Standard. 



ANCESTRY, BIRTH AND EARLY YEARS 

Robert Edward Lee was a scion of an ancient family. 
Launcelot Lee, who fought at Hastings under the 
banner of WilHam the Conqueror, in 1066, and Lionel 
Lee,* who won fame at the Siege of Acre with 
Richard Coeur de Lion, in 1192, were his ancestors; 
and on his maternal side the blood of Robert Bruce 
flowed in his veins. In American history the Lees of 
Virginia had been distinguished for character and 
achievement since the middle of the seventeenth 
century; but Gen. Robert E. Lee, though he was 
proud of his name, and resolved never to tarnish it, 
was yet so far from wishing to exploit his ancestry, 
that when the project of pubHshing a Lee genealogy 
was submitted to him he said: "I think the money 
had better be appropriated to reheve the poor." 

He was born in that Virginian county which the 
early settlers named "Westmoreland," after that 
famous shire in the west of England, which has 
ever been renowned for its beautiful mountains and 
its lovely lakes — Windermere, Grasmere, UUswater. 

The Virginian Westmoreland presents, indeed, a 
striking contrast in those respects to the Westmore- 

* The armor worn by Lionel Lee in the crusades may still be 
seen in the Horse Armory of the Tower of London. 

3 



4 THE SOUL OF LEE 

land of old England. For, though on its northern 
border there flows a majestic river to which all 
Europe can scarcely show an equal, yet it boasts no 
charming lakes reflecting woody hills and mirroring 
the changing hues of the sky, nor any beautiful 
mountains Hfting their lofty heads to heaven. In a 
word, though it has a beauty and a charm all its 
own, it cannot rival the picturesqueness of that 
famous lake country of the northwest of England. 

But as the traveller passes through the Virginian 
Westmoreland, he falls under a spell which few 
locahties anywhere can rival. The forms of the great 
men who have sprung from its soil rise before him. 
Their fame towers up to heaven, loftier and more 
majestic than the mountains of England's West- 
moreland. The deeds they have wrought, the ideas 
they have given to the world, the standards of civic 
virtue they have upheld, are like lofty peaks piercing 
the sky on every hand. After all, great men are more 
impressive than great mountains, — and the great 
men born in this Virginian county are among the 
greatest of all time. 

Here was born Washington, the Father of his 
Country, and Monroe, the Father of the Monroe 
Doctrine. Close to its border was born Madison, 
the Father of the Constitution. Here, too, was 
born Thomas Marshafl, father of the great Chief 
Justice John Marshall, so that Westmoreland is the 
grandsire of that iUustrious jurist. Here was born 
another great jurist, Bushrod Washington, whom 
President Adams placed second only to Marshall, 



ANCESTRY, BIRTH AND EARLY YEARS 5 

and who, in the estimation of Mr. Justice Story, was 
one of the greatest ornaments that ever adorned the 
Supreme Bench of the United States. Westmoreland 
then well deserves to be called, as it has been, "the 
birthplace of Genius." 

Here, too, flourished the first of the Lee name in 
Virginia, the stout-hearted Colonel Richard Lee, who 
dared to challenge the power of the mighty Cromwell, 
and only at last acknowledged his authority on 
condition that the Old Dominion should never bear 
taxation without representation. Grand old Strat- 
ford House, the Lee ancestral home, has a history 
scarcely equaled by any other mansion in American 
history. There lived Governor Thomas Lee, whose 
worth was so much appreciated in the mother country 
that Queen Caroline contributed, unsolicited, a large 
sum from the Privy Purse to help in its rebuilding, 
when it had been destroyed by fire. There in the 
same chamber were born two signers of the Declara- 
tion of Independence, par nohile fratrum, Francis 
Lightfoot Lee and Richard Henry Lee, the Cicero of 
the Continental Congress, — scholar, debater, states- 
man, patriot, orator — the man who dared to propose 
the resolution that "these colonies are, and by right 
ought to be, free and independent states" — the man 
who was unanimously elected president of the Amer- 
ican Congress, and was afterwards one of Virginia's 
first representatives in the United States Senate. 
It was he who wrote the Memorial of Congress to the 
people of British America. His hand also produced 
the Address of Congress to the people of Great Brit- 



6 THE SOUL OF LEE 

ain — productions which Mr. Wirt says were "un- 
surpassed by any of the state papers of the time." 
(No wonder the British made such strenuous efforts 
to capture him!) At Stratford, too, lived Gen. 
Robert E. Lee's father, Henry Lee, the famous 
"Light Horse Harry," a soldier of marked ability, 
the favorite of Washington, chosen by Congress to 
pronounce that great man's funeral oration; an 
accomplished classical scholar, a brilliant orator 
and the historian of the Southern campaigns of the 
Revolution. And at Stratford was born, on the 
19th day of January, 1807, his son Robert Edward 
Lee, destined to become the greatest soldier in 
American history.* 

Henry Lee, at the age of nineteen, was nominated 
by Patrick Henry to be a captain of cavalry; rapidly 
rose in rank; was presented by Congress in 1779 
with a gold medal for "warlike skill and prowess"; 
became lieutenant colonel of dragoons in 1780; was 
described by Washington as an officer possessed of 
"great reserves of genius"; was praised by Lafayette 
for "his talents as a corps commander"; and by 
Gen. Nathaniel Greene in the highest terms; while 
another general officer said: "He seemed to have 
come out of his mother's womb a soldier." After 
the war, as a member of the Virginia Convention, he 
pleaded with eloquence and power for the adoption 

* Stratford was a large and stately manor house, not far from 
the banks of the Potomac, built in the shape of the letter "H." 
On its roof were summer houses where ladies and gentlemen 
promenaded in the evenings. 



ANCESTRY, BIRTH AND EARLY YEARS 7 

of the Federal Constitution, with Washington and 
Madison and Marshall and against Patrick Henry 
and George Mason and Benjamin Harrison, who 
opposed its ratification. 

When Robert Edward Lee was four years old the 
family removed to Alexandria, where he received the 
foundation of a sound classical and mathematical 
education at the hands of Mr. Wm. B. Leary, for 
whom he cherished a sincere attachment to the end of 
his life. We know little of his relations to his father, 
the latter's ill-health having separated them for a 
long period; but we see him reverently visiting his 
grave in South Carolina during the first year of the 
war, and we note that his only literary work was 
the editing of his father's Memoirs, in June, 1869, 
to which is prefixed a biography from his own hand. 
When he was eleven his father, long an invalid, died, 
and upon the young Robert devolved the care of his 
widowed mother, in her declining years and failing 
health, his eldest brother being absent from home, 
and his second brother, afterwards Commodore 
Smith Lee, having entered the Navy. Never did son 
more faithfully fulfil his trust. He cheerfully exe- 
cuted her orders and attended to her business, even 
the little household duties which ill-health incapaci- 
tated her to perform, and tenderly and untiringly 
labored to promote her happiness. It is stated that 
he was accustomed to carry her in his arms to the 
carriage and arrange her cushions with the gentleness 
of an experienced nurse. No wonder the dear lady 
exclaimed, on his departure for West Point, "How 



8 THE SOUL OF LEE 

can I live without Robert? He is both son and 
daughter to me." 

He had just graduated at West Point when he was 
summoned to attend her in her last illness, and we are 
told that he nursed her with the tenderness and 
fidelity of a daughter, administering her food and 
medicine with his own hand, and scarcely for a 
moment leaving her bedside until the last painful 
scene was over. In after life he often said "he owed 
everything to his mother." 

Though we know few particulars of Lee's boyhood, 
we do know that he loved to follow the hunt over hill 
and vale to the merry sound of the horn and the 
hound in pursuit of the wily fox or the bounding deer. 
We know also, on his own authority, that he always 
loved horses and enjoyed training them "as much as 
any one." His personal affection for his old war 
horse "Traveller" is as pathetic as it is beautiful. 
And this love was reciprocated. "Everybody and 
everything — his family, his friends, his horse, and 
his dog — loves Colonel Lee," was said of him when 
he returned home from the Mexican War. 

The venerable and highly esteemed Mr. Benjamin 
Hallowell, who prepared him for West Point, said 
that he was as remarkable for the precision of his con- 
duct as for the accuracy and beauty with which he 
drew the mathematical figures. One of his school- 
mates remembered that Robert Lee was always 
looked up to with respect and esteem by the whole 
school and that he was noted for his quiet and peace- 
able disposition. 



ANCESTRY, BIRTH AND EARLY YEARS 9 

The following remarkable incident related of this 
period of his life is prophetic of the immense moral 
force of his manhood. Being invited, during a 
vacation, to visit a friend of his family who lived in 
the gay, rollicking style then but too common in old 
Virginia, he found his host one of the grand old gen- 
tlemen of that day, with every fascination of mind 
and manner, who though not of dissipated habits, 
led a life which the sterner sense of the boy could not 
approve. The old man shrank before the unspoken 
rebuke of the youthful hero. Coming to his bedside 
the night before his departure, he lamented the idle 
and useless Hfe into which he had fallen, excusing 
himself upon the score of loneliness, and the sorrow 
which weighed upon him in the loss of those most dear. 
In the most impressive manner he besought his 
young guest to be warned by his example; prayed 
him to cherish the good habits he had already ac- 
quired, and promised to listen to his entreaties that 
he would change his own life.* Young Lee entered 
West Point in 1825, when he was eighteen years of age. 
There he was distinguished for the excellence of his 
scholarship and the purity of his life at a time when 
according to the statement made by the superin- 
tendent to President Adams, drunkenness and dissi- 
pation were very prevalent among the cadets. He 
graduated in 1829, with the second highest honors of 
his class, and with the record of never having received 
a demerit for neglect of duty. 

* Popular Life of Gen. R. E. Lee, by Emily V. Mason, p. 24. 



10 THE SOUL OF LEE 

Two years later he was united in marriage to 
Mary Custis, the daughter and heiress of George 
Washington Parke Custis, and the granddaughter 
of the wife of General Washington. She had re- 
ceived a fine classical education, and was the heiress 
of both Arlington and "the White House," on the 
Pamunkey River, which was the scene of the marriage 
of Gen. Washington with the widow Custis. Hence 
her father did not favor the match with the young 
lieutenant, devoted to a mihtary career. Seven 
children were born of this marriage, three sons and 
four daughters, George Washington Custis, Mary 
Custis, William Henry Fitzhugh, Annie Carter, 
Eleanor Agnes, Robert Edward, and Mildred. 



II 



LEE IN THE SERVICE OF THE UNITED 
STATES ARMY 



"What a grace was seated on his brow! 

. . . the front of Jove himself; 
An eye, like Mars, to threaten and command; 
A station like the herald Mercury, 
New-lighted on a heaven-kissing hill; 
A combination and a form indeed 
Where every God did seem to set his seal. 
To give the world assurance of a man!'' 

— Shakspeare. 

. . . "/ have no ambition 
To see a goodlier man J' 

— Shakspeare. 



II 

LEE IN THE SERVICE OF THE UNITED 
STATES ARMY 

Lieutenant Lee's first assignment to duty was at 
Old Point, Va., where he remained several years. In 
1835 he was appointed assistant astronomer on the 
commission for marking out the boundary line 
between Ohio and Michigan. In 1838 he was made 
captain in the Engineer Corps. He had previously 
been on duty in Washington as assistant to the chief 
engineer. 

The soul of the man shone out during these early 
years of his career just as it did in later Hfe, high and 
pure and noble, so that he was universally beloved 
and respected by his brother officers. 

In 1837-8 Lieutenant Lee did most valuable ser- 
vice as engineer in charge of the improvement of the 
navigation of the Mississippi, for which St. Louis, as 
well as Minneapohs and St. Paul will ever owe him a 
debt of gratitude. The problem was to open a pass- 
age for the river at the Des Moines rapids. It was 
a great feat of engineering. Capt. May, of Illinois, 
in a notice of Gen. Lee's death wrote: "His exhibition 
of skill as an engineer and rehable manager made for 
him thousands of admirers and friends on the Upper 
and Lower Mississippi. In 1838-9 there was a serious 

13 



14 THE SOUL OF LEE 

alarm and real danger of the Mississippi cutting a 
channel on the IlKnois side, by which St. Louis would 
have become a deserted village, when the talent and 
skill of R, E. Lee were sought and obtained. He 
conceived and executed a plan which saved St. Louis 
from destruction as a commercial city." 

In a letter written from St. Louis at this time 
occurs the following playful passage: 

"Tell my cousin Philippa that it is the furthest from my 
wish to detract from any of the little Lees, but as to her boy 
being equal to Mr. Rooney (a pet name for his son W. H. F, 
Lee), it is a thing not even to be supposed, much less believed, 
although we live in a credulous country, where people stick 
at nothing from a coon story to a sea serpent." 

In 1842 Capt. Lee was stationed at Fort Hamilton, 
in New York harbor, and soon after was made one 
of the visitors to West Point. 

We come now to his career in the Mexican War in 
which he won great distinction. His first important 
service was in March, 1847, in connection with the 
siege of Vera Cruz where he directed the firing of the 
guns manned by a detachment of seamen in the 
trenches. In General Scott's autobiography, he says 
of Lee: "This officer greatly distinguished himself 
at the siege of Vera Cruz." Indeed the command- 
ing general throughout the campaign constantly 
makes honorable mention of him. 

At Cerro Gordo he wrote: "I am compelled to 
make special mention of Capt. R. E. Lee, Engineer. 
This officer was again indefatigable during these 
operations in reconnoissances, as daring as laborious, 



LEE IN THE SERVICE OF THE U. S. ARMY 15 

and of the utmost value. Nor was he less conspic- 
uous in planning batteries, and in conducting col- 
umns to their stations under the heavy fire of the 
enemy." On one of these occasions, having ven- 
tured too far from his supporting column, he found 
himself in the midst of the Mexicans. *'He con- 
cealed himself under a fallen tree, near a spring where 
the Mexicans obtained water. While he lay there 
Mexican soldiers passed and repassed over the tree, 
and even sat down upon it, without discovering him. 
He remained until night enabled him to retire in 
safety." 

Throughout the campaign Capt. Lee was con- 
stantly distinguished for skill and daring, but the 
most famous of his achievements was his exploration 
at night of the Pedregal— "a vast surface of volcanic 
rocks and scoriae, pathless, precipitous, broken into 
every possible form, presenting sharp ridges and deep 
fissures, exceedingly difficult for the passage even 
in the daytime of infantry, cavalry, or single horse- 
men." Seven staff officers dispatched by Gen. 
Scott had reported that it was impracticable to 
penetrate the Pedregal in the dark, but Capt. Lee 
undertook it and succeeded. It was accomplished 
amid darkness and storm — "without fight, without a 
companion or a guide — scarcely a step could have 
been taken without fear of death." "The brilfiant 
victory of Contreras on the following morning was 
made possible. Gen. Scott reported, "only by Capt. 
Lee's services that night," and he characterized it as 
"the greatest feat of physical and moral courage 



16 THE SOUL OF LEE 

performed by any individual, in my knowledge, 
pending the campaign." The same ofl&cer in his 
report of the battle at Chapultepec speaking of Lee 
says he was "as distinguished for felicitous execu- 
tion as for science and daring," and again, "Capt. 
Lee, so constantly distinguished, also bore important 
orders from me (Sept. 13th) until he fainted from a 
wound." 

Other American officers bore similar high testi- 
mony to Lee's invaluable services, among whom we 
may mention Gen. P. F. Smith, Gen. Pillow, and 
Gen. Shields. Throughout the Mexican War he 
was equally distinguished for miHtary skill and for 
personal daring. 

His letters at this period to members of his family 
show on the one hand his enthusiastic appreciation 
of the beauty of the scenery in Mexico, and on the 
other, his keen interest in the poHtics of the day. 

It is noteworthy also that he fully reciprocated 
Gen, Scott's warm friendship. He writes: "The 
great cause of our success was in our leader. It was 
his stout heart that cast us on the shore of Vera Cruz; 
his bold self-reliance that forced us through the pass 
at Cerro Gordo; his indomitable courage that, amidst 
all the doubts and difficulties that surrounded us at 
Pueblo, pressed us forward to this capital, and finally 
brought us within its gates." 

His description of the battle of Cerro Gordo is 
very graphic. In it he says: "The papers cannot 
tell you what a horrible sight a field of battle is, nor 
will I." In another letter he tells his son Custis how 



LEE IN THE SERVICE OF THE U. S. ARMY 17 

he had the wounded Mexicans carried to a house by 
the roadside, where they were attended by Mexican 
surgeons; of his finding by the side of a hut a httle 
Mexican boy who had been a bugler or drummer, 
with his arm terribly shattered, and how a large 
Mexicari soldier, in the last agonies of death, had 
fallen on him; how he was attracted to the scene 
by the grief of a Httle girl; how he had the dying 
Mexican taken off the boy, and how grateful the Httle 
girl was. "Her large black eyes," he said, "were 
streaming with tears, her hands crossed over her 
breast; her hair in one long plat behind reached her 
waist, her shoulders and arms bare, and without 
stockings or shoes. Her plaintive tone of 'Mille 
gracias, Signor,' as I had the dying man Hfted off the 
boy and both carried to the hospital, stiU rings in my 
ears,"* In this incident another aspect of the Soul 
of Lee is revealed — his humanity, his tenderness, his 
sympathy, his unfaiHng effort to reHeve suffering, 
without distinction of friend or foe. 

Of this characteristic we have the following testi- 
mony from the pen of Gen. Joseph E. Johnston, who 
writes: "We had the same intimate associates who 
thought as I did that no other youth or man so 
unites the qualities that win warm friendship and 
command high respect. For he was full of sym- 
pathy and kindness, genial and fond of gay conver- 
sation, and even of fun, that made him the most 
agreeable of companions, while his correctness of 

* Quoted by Gen. Fitzhugh Lee. 



18 THE SOUL OF LEE 

demeanor and language and attention to all duties, 
personal and official, and a dignity as much a part 
of himself as the elegance of his person, gave him a 
superiority that every one acknowledged in his heart. 
He was the only one of all the men I have known 
who could laugh at the faults and follies of his friends 
in such a manner as to make them ashamed without 
touching their affection for him, and to confirm their 
respect and sense of his superiority. 

"I saw strong evidence of the sympathy of his 
nature the morning after the first engagement of our 
troops in the valley of Mexico. I had lost a cher- 
ished young relative in that action, known to Lee 
only as my relative. Meeting me, he suddenly saw 
in my face the effect of that loss, burst into tears and 
expressed his deep syrapathy as tenderly in words 
as his lovely wife would have done." 

Lee's opinion regarding the right of the conqueror 
to exact indemnity, is interesting in this crisis of the 
Great War that is convulsing the world. He wrote : 

We have the right, by the laws of war, of dictating the 
terms of peace and requiring indemnity for our losses and 
expenses. Rather than forego that right, except through a 
spirit of magnanimity to a crushed foe, I would fight them ten 
years, but I would be generous in exercising it. 

He returned from the Mexican campaign "crowned 
with honors and covered with brevets." More than 
twelve years were to elapse before Lee was called to 
face the great crisis presented by the outbreak of the 
war between the states. 



LEE IN THE SERVICE OF THE U. S. ARMY 19 

Invited by the Cuban Junta to become their mil- 
itary leader, he declines. Appointed a member of 
the Board of Engineers, he was employed until 1852 
in strengthening the port of Baltimore by new 
defenses. 

Then followed three years as superintendent of the 
Military Academy at West Point, during which term 
he raised the discipHne of the corps to a higher state 
of efficiency and improved the course of study. From 
1855 to i860 his service was in the West and the 
Southwest, as Lieutenant Colonel of the Second 
Cavalry — in Missouri and in Texas. 

His experience with the Quartermaster's depart- 
ment in 1855 may help some of our officers in 1917 
to endure their experiences today with more equa- 
nimity. He writes. 

*'I have been busy all the week superintending 
and drilling recruits. Not a stitch of clothing has 
as yet arrived for them, though I made the necessary 
requisition for it to be sent here more than two 
months ago in Louisville. Yesterday, at muster, I 
found one of the late arrivals in a dirty, tattered 
shirt and pants, with a white hat and shoes and other 
garments to match. I asked him why he had not 
put on clean clothes. He said he had none. I asked 
him if he could not wash and mend those. He said 
he had nothing else to put on. I then told him 
immediately after muster to go down to the river, 
wash his clothes and sit on the bank and watch the 
passing steamboats till they dried, and then mend 
them. This morning at inspection he looked as 



20 THE SOUL OF LEE 

proud as possible, stood in the position of a soldier 
with his Uttle fingers on the seams of his pants, his 
beaver cocked back, and his toes sticking through his 
shoes, but his skin and solitary two garments clean. 
He grinned very happily at my comphments." 

In a letter from Fort Brown, Texas, in 1856, Lee 
expressed his views on the institution of slavery thus : 

"In this enhghtened age there are few, I beheve, 
but will acknowledge that slavery, as an institution, is 
a moral and poHtical evil in any country. I think it, 
however, a greater evil to the white man than to the 
black race, and while my feelings are strongly inter- 
ested in behalf of the latter, my sympathies are 
stronger for the former. The blacks are immeasur- 
ably better off here than in Africa, morally, socially 
and physically. . . . While we see the course of the 
final abolition of slavery is onward and we give it the 
aid of our prayers and all justifiable means in our 
power, we must leave the progress as well as the result 
in His hands who sees the end, . . . and with whom a 
thousand years are but as a single day." 

The last incident of note in Lee's Ufe before the 
storm of war broke over the country is connected 
with the "John Brown Raid" in October, 1859. 
Being on furlough at Arhngton when that fanatic- 
madman made his invasion of Virginia and seized 
Harper's Ferry, he was ordered to proceed to that 
place with a battalion of marines and arrest the 
invader. This he did on the 17th of October, quietly 
and expeditiously. The insurgents, few in number, 
were all killed or mortally wounded but four, John 



LEE IN THE SERVICE OF THE U. S. ARMY 21 

Brown, Stevens, Coppie and Shields. The ring- 
leader was tried, convicted and hanged December 2, 
1859. 

Ordered back to Texas, Lee remained at San 
Antonio in discharge of his duty until February, 1861, 
when he was summoned to Washington, reaching 
Arlington March i. 



Ill 



THE SOUL OF LEE IN THE GREAT CRISIS 
OF HIS LIFE 



"Non ille pro caris amicis 
Aut patria timidus perire.^^ 

"I did only what my duty demanded. I could have 
taken no other course without dishonor.^' — Robert E. Lee. 

"The degree of the love of liberty is proportioned in 
each man to the moral elevation he has attained.^' 

— -Cavour. 

"You cannot barter manhood for peace, nor the right 
of self -government for life or property." — Robert E. Lee. 

"Let each man resolve that the right of self-government, 
liberty and peace, shall find in him a defender J'^ 

— Robert E. Lee. 



Ill 

THE SOUL OF LEE IN THE GREAT CRISIS 
OF HIS LIFE 

The great crisis had come. Virginia had passed the 
ordinance of secession and joined her Southern sisters. 
What course should Lee take? He loved the Union 
with a passionate devotion. His ancestors had 
played a great part in its formation. And though 
the right of secession had been acknowledged in the 
early history of the country, quite as much at the 
North as at the South; and though that right was 
defended in the text-book on the Constitution 
(Rawle's) taught at West Point in the year before his 
entrance as a cadet; yet Lee saw that there could 
be then no such thing as peaceable secession. ''Se- 
cession," he wrote, "is nothing but revolution." 
And further, ''I can anticipate no greater calamity 
for the country than a dissolution of the Union." 

While his mind was torn with doubt as to his duty, 
he received through the Hon. Francis P. Blair, and 
at the instance of Mr. Lincoln, the offer of the supreme 
command of the United States Army. But neither 
his ambition as a soldier, nor his love for the Union, 
could tempt him to accept this magnificent offer. 
He says, "I declined the offer he made me to take 
command of the army in the field, stating as candidly 

25 



26 THE SOUL OF LEE 

and courteously as I could, that though opposed to 
secession and deprecating war, I could take no part 
in the invasion of the Southern States." 

And yet he hesitated to break the bonds which a 
lifetime of service in the U. S. Army (he was then 54) 
had forged. It was a choice as full of anguish as 
perhaps any human soul was ever called to make. 
Through the long night he wrestled with the question 
in his chamber at Arlington, pacing the floor hour 
after hour, and often crying to God for guidance. 
At last the choice was made. He threw in his lot 
with Virginia, and in doing so deHberately sacrificed 
nearly everything that men hold dear, home and 
fortune and professional career, and the dazzling 
rewards of ambition. 

But why? Because he held his allegiance to his 
state supreme; because by. ancestry, by inherited 
traditions, he was a Virginian of the Virginians, and 
could not fail to reflect the feeling which his eloquent 
father expressed when he exclaimed in the debate 
on the Virginia and Kentucky Resolutions of 1798: 
"Virginia is my country, her will I obey, however 
lamentable the fate to which it may subject me." 
To use his own words: "I had to meet the question 
whether I should take part against my native state. 
I have not been able to make up my mind to raise 
my hand against my relations, my children, my 
home." Not a few of the brave and candid men of 
the North have declared that had they been placed 
as Lee was placed, they would have done as Lee 
did. 



THE GREAT CRISIS OF HIS LIFE 27 

Gamaliel Bradford, contemplating the perhaps 
impossible contingency of a future sectional separa- 
tion in our country, says, "I should myself be first, 
last, and always a son and subject of New England 
and Massachusetts," words which are the echo of an 
utterance of another distinguished son of Massa- 
chusetts, Charles Francis Adams, who said at the 
Lee Centennial, '*If in all respects similarly circum- 
stanced,! hope I should have been fihal and unselfish 
enough to have done as Lee did." 

Lee's anguish of soul in deciding to resign his 
commission is reflected in his letter to Gen. Scott, 
April 20, 1861, in which he refers to "the struggle it 
has cost me to separate myself from a service to which 
I have devoted the best years of my life and all the 
ability I possessed." Of all the inner struggles of his 
life, it is evident this was the most intense, the most 
painful. Never, in any of his great battles, — Chan- 
cellorsville, Sharpsburg, Gettysburg, the Wilderness, 
Petersburg, was his great soul so shaken as on that 
night in his chamber at Arlington when this momen- 
tous decision was trembling in the balance. Even 
now, after the lapse of fifty-six years, no generous 
heart can contemplate without emotion and admi- 
ration this midnight wresthng of a brave and un- 
selfish man. 

One question alone presented itself to his great 
soul: "What is my duty?" He put aside ambition — 
personal inclination — every selfish interest. Nothing 
weighed in the balance at that supreme moment 
but the purest, highest, most unselfish motives. 



28 THE SOUL OF LEE 

To this Charles Francis Adams bears noble testi- 
mony: "Lee was a soldier; as such, rank and the 
possibility of high command and great achieve- 
ments were very dear to him. His choice put rank 
and command behind him. He quietly and silently 
made the greatest sacrifice a soldier can be asked to 
make. With war plainly impending, the foremost 
place in the army of which he was an officer was now 
tendered him; his answer was to lay down the com- 
mission he already held." And this generous foe goes 
on to say, ''He stands awaiting sentence at the bar of 
history in very respectable company. Associated 
with him are for instance, William of Orange, known 
as the Silent; John Hampden, the original Pater 
PatricB; Oliver Cromwell, the Protector of the English 
Commonwealth; Sir Harry Vane, once a governor of 
Massachusetts; and George Washington, a Vir- 
ginian of note." It is of moment to enquire what 
was Lee's attitude, — once he had cast in his lot with 
Virginia — touching the nature of the struggle between 
the North and the South. Let us look into his soul 
for the answer. We can do this because his words 
were ever the true expression of his soul. "I had 
no other guide," he wrote, "nor had I any other ) 
object, than the defence of those principles of Amer- ' 
ican Hberty upon which the constitutions of the 
several states were originally founded; and unless { 
they are strictly observed, I fear there will be an 1 
end to republican government in this country."* ' 

* Jones, Rem., p. 218. 



THE GREAT CRISIS OF HIS LIFE 29 

And again, "We had, I was satisfied, sacred principles 
to maintain and rights to defend, for which we were 
in duty bound to do our best, even if we perished in 
the endeavor." To this add his words to his sol- 
diers, "You cannot barter manhood for peace, nor 
the right of self-government for Ufe or property. . . . 
Let us then oppose constancy to adversity, fortitude 
to suffering, and courage to danger, with the firm 
assurance that He who gave freedom to our fathers 
will bless the efforts of their children to preserve it."* 
These words leave no room for doubt that to the 
soul of Robert E. Lee the cause of the Confederacy 
was the cause of Liberty and Self-government, and 
that history must recognize in him an illustrious 
champion of Freedom and Democracy. The first 
of these conclusions can hardly be denied by any 
candid historian, but the second is challenged even 
by Mr. GamaHel Bradford, — in spite of his almost 
boundless admiration for the character of Lee. 

*In an unpublished letter, dated Richmond, Virginia, July 
27, 1861 (see Life Bishop Kerfoot, James Pott & Co., 1876, 
Vol. I, p. 223), Gen. Lee wrote: 

" As far as my voice and counsel go, it will be continued 
on our side as long as there is one horse that can carry his 
rider and one arm to wield a sword. I prefer annihilation 
to submission. They may destroy, but I trust they will 
never conquer us. I bear no malice, have no animosities to 
indulge, no selfish purpose to gratify. My only object is to 
repel the invaders of our peace and the spoilers of our homes. 
I hope in time they will see the injustice of their course and 
return to their better nature." 



30 THE SOUL OF LEE 

Commenting on the words just quoted, he is "almost" 
ready to look upon Lee "as one of the great martyrs of 
liberty" — but he feels compelled to refuse him that 
chaplet of glory on the ground that Lee, though he 
was no advocate of slavery, though before the war he 
had freed his own slaves, and had declared that 
"slavery, as an institution, is a moral and political 
evil in any country," " was yet, after all, fighting for 
slavery, and he must have known perfectly well that 
if the South triumphed and maintained its inde- 
pendence, slavery would grow and flourish for an- 
other generation, if not for another century." 

But what if Lee believed, as apparently Jefiferson 
Davis believed in 1861, that in any case slavery was 
doomed by the moral judgment of the world, and 
that even if successful in their revolution, the South- 
ern states would be compelled sooner or later, by 
gradual emancipation, or otherwise, to confer freedom 
upon their slaves. 

Will not the historian in determining this question 
refer to the expressed opinions of the men who fought 
the war — statesmen and soldiers of the North, and 
statesmen and soldiers of the South? 

What then, we ask, were the avowed purposes of 
leaders on both sides? And first of Mr. Lincoln: 

In August, 1862, he wrote Mr. Greeley: "My para- 
mount object in this struggle is to save the Union, 
and is not either to save or destroy slavery. If I 
could save the Union without freeing any slave I 
would do it, and if I could save it by freeing all the 
slaves I would do it; and if I could save it by freeing 



THE GREAT CRISIS OF HIS LIFE 31 

some and leaving others alone, I would also do that. 
What I do about slavery and the colored race, I do 
because I believe it helps to save the Union; and 
what I forbear, I forbear because I do not believe it 
would help to save the Union." * 

Mr. Lincoln then was waging the war not to free 
the slaves but to save the Union. His Emancipa- 
tion Proclamation (January i, 1863) was avowedly a 
war measure, and it did not proclaim the freedom of 
all the slaves, but only "those persons held as slaves 
in any state the people whereof shall then be in 
rebellion against the United States." Slaves in all 
states not in rebellion (as Maryland, Kentucky, 
Missouri) were not released from slavery by the 
Emancipation Proclamation. 

On the other hand Jefferson Davis declared that 
the South was not lighting for slavery, and in fact 
he embarked on the enterprise of secession believing 
that he would, as a consequence, lose his slaves, for 
he wrote to his wife in February, 1861: "/w any case 
our slave property will eventually be lost," that is to 
say, whether successful or not in estabHshing the 
Southern Confederacy. Lee, long before the war, 
emancipated the few slaves that came to him by 
inheritance, whereas his Union antagonist, Gen. 
Grant, held on to those that had come to him through 
marriage with a Southern woman, until they were 
freed by the Thirteenth Amendment. 

Stonewall Jackson never owned but two slaves — a 

* Short Life by Nicolay, p. 336. 



32 THE SOUL OF LEE 

man and a woman— whom he bought at their earnest 
solicitation. And he kept account of the wages he 
would have paid for white labor, and when he con- 
sidered himself reimbursed for the purchase money 
gave them their freedom. Gen. Joseph E. Johnston 
never owned a slave, nor did Gen. A. P. Hill, nor Gen. 
Fitzhugh Lee. Gen. J. E. B. Stuart, the famous 
cavalry leader, never owned but two, and he rid him- 
self of these long before the war.* 

To these facts as to the attitude of the leaders and 
commanders of the Confederacy, should be added the 
testimony of the rank and file of the Southern armies. 
With one voice they avowed then, with one voice 
they avow now, that they were not marching and 
fighting and sufTering and dying for slavery but for 
the right of self-government. Old soldiers, known 
to the writer, declare they never met a Southern 
soldier who had drawn his sword to perpetuate slavery. 
What they had at heart was the preservation of the 
supreme and sacred right of self-government. They 
had the same pride in their cause as Lee had when he 
expressed his absolute behef in its nobility and 
justice, and his resolute determination to fight for it 
so long as there was any possibility of success. 
To use his own words, "Let each man resolve that the 
right of self-government, Hberty and peace, shall find 
in him a defender." 

And what was true of the soldiers of the South was 

* See article by Col. W. Gordon McCabe in the London 
Saturday Review of March 5, 19 10. 



THE GREAT CRISIS OF HIS LIFE 33 

true also (unless the present writer is misinformed) 
of the soldiers of the North. Slavery was not the 
issue in their minds. As a general rule, at least, 
they were not fighting to free the slaves but to pre-, 
serve the Union. i 

In the Hght of these facts — of these sentiments — 
of the actors in the grim tragedy of the war, it may be 
confidently affirmed that the flag of the Confederacy 
was no more an emblem of slave power than the 
Stars and Stripes, for the Constitution of the United 
States recognized the institution of slavery as dis- 
tinctly as did the Constitution of the Confederate 
States up to the date of the adoption of the Thirteenth 
Amendment in December, 1865. 

But the Southern Confederacy is reproached with 
the fact that it was deliberately built on slavery. 
Slavery, we are told, was its cornerstone. But if slav- 
ery was the cornerstone of the Confederacy, what are 
we to say of the Constitution of the United States? 
That instrument as originally adopted contained three 
sections which recognized slavery; and whereas the 
Constitution of the Southern Confederacy absolutely 
prohibited the slave trade, the Constitution of the 
United States prohibited the aboKtion of the slave 
trade for twenty years from its adoption — against the 
earnest protest of Virginia. And if the men of the 
South are reproached for denying liberty to three and 
a half milHons of human beings, at the same time that 
they professed to be waging a great war for their own 
liberty, what are we to say of the revolting colonies 
of 1776, who rebelled against the British Crown to 



34 THE SOUL OF LEE 

achieve their liberty while slavery existed in every 
one of the thirteen colonies unrepudiated? 

Cannot those historians who deny that Lee fought 
for liberty because the South still held the blacks in 
bondage see that upon the same principle they must 
impugn the sincerity of the signers of the Declara- 
tion of Independence? For while in that famous 
instrument they affirmed before the world that "all 
men were created free and equal," and that " govern- 
ments derive their just powers from the consent 
of the governed," they took no steps whatever to 
free the slaves. Indeed if it be maintained that the 
cornerstone of the Constitution of the Southern Con- 
federacy was slavery, then it must be acknowledged 
that the Constitution of the United States had a 
worse cornerstone, — since it held the aegis of its pro- 
tection over the slave trade itself ! 

The noble-hearted biographer of Lee, quoted above, 
Mr. Gamaliel Bradford, holds that Lee, in spite of his 
passionate declarations that he was fighting in the 
cause of liberty, was after all in fact fighting for the 
perpetuation of slavery. This proposition rests 
upon an inference that might or might not be correct, 
as we have suggested above. But more than this, 
it necessitates the position that in fighting against the 
United States he was fighting against a power which 
repudiated slavery and demanded its abolition. 
But, let it be observed, this was not true of the 
United States until the adoption of the Thirteenth 
Amendment on December i8, 1865, up to which date 
the United States was still a slave power. 



THE GREAT CRISIS OF HIS LIFE 35 

We have dwelt upon this question somewhat in 
detail because a correct understanding of it is 
vital to a true elucidation of the course which 
Lee pursued in this the greatest crisis of his hfe. 
His whole character and career hinges upon the purity 
and elevation of his motives as a soldier of the Con- 
federacy. To him it was a sacred cause, dearer than 
hfe. He was lighting in protest against the over- 
throw of the constitutional balance of the government 
of the Fathers. To his mind "the future of popular 
government depended on the careful balance of local 
and central authority for which the Constitution 
originally provided." These are liis words, "All 
that the South ever desired was that the Union as 
established by our forefathers should be preserved, 
and that the government as originally organized 
should be administered in purity and truth." And 
again, "I did only what my duty demanded. I 
could have taken no other course without dishonor. 
Thus, if it were all to be done over again, I should act 
in precisely the same manner." 

A recent historian of the United States has gen- 
erously said, "Censure's voice upon the action of 
such a noble soul is hushed. . . . Could we share the 
thoughts of that high-minded man as he paced the 
broad-pillared veranda of his stately Arlington 
house, his eyes glancing across the river at the flag 
of his country waving above the dome of the Cap- 
itol, and then resting on the soil of his native Vir- 
ginia, we should be wiUing now to recognize in him 
one of the finest products of American life. For 



36 THE SOUL OF LEE 

surely, as the years go on, we shall see that such 
a life can be judged by no partisan measure, and 
we shall come to look upon him as the English of our 
day regard Washington, whom little more than a 
century ago they deUghted to call a rebel."* 

On the 2oth of April Lee had tendered his resig- 
nation as an officer of the United States Army. On 
April 23d in the presence of the Convention of the 
State and a large assemblage of citizens, he was pre- 
sented his commission as Major General and com- 
mander-in-chief of the forces of Virginia by Mr. Jan- 
ney, president of the Convention. 

In accepting it General Lee said, "I would have 
much preferred had your choice fallen upon an abler 
man. Trusting in Almighty God, an approving 
conscience, and the aid of my fellow-citizens, I devote 
myself to the service of my native State, in whose 
behalf alone will I ever again draw my sword." 
Before the sun set on that very day he was called 
upon to resign the commission just put into his hands. 

Alexander H. Stephens had come to Richmond to 
induce Virginia to enter the Confederacy which had 
been formed by the states to the South. The com- 
pact which he came to propose left Lee out of con- 
sideration, and, in order to ratify it, it was necessary 
that Lee should resign the office of commander of 
the forces of Virginia which had been that very 
morning bestowed upon him under such impres- 

* History of the U. S. by James Ford Rhodes, Vol. IH, p. 413. 



THE GREAT CRISIS OF HIS LIFE 37 

sive circumstances by the Virginia Convention, — 
and this without any compensation and without any 
promise of rank in the Confederate Army, 

Mr. Stephens says, "I knew that one word, or even 
a look of dissatisfaction from him, would terminate 
the negotiations with which I was entrusted." 

General Lee did not hesitate a moment, but, recog- 
nizing that he alone stood between the Confederacy 
and his state, at once consented to the proposal, and 
surrendered the sword which Virginia had just put 
into his hand. It was an act of self-abnegation fit to 
be placed by the side of his declination of the chief 
command of the United States Army a few days 
before, for it reduced him to a subordinate and incon- 
spicuous position in the new Confederacy. This 
noble disinterestedness — this complete readiness to 
subordinate his personal interest to the good of the 
cause he had espoused, was characteristic of the 
man — was indeed one of the most conspicuous 
features of his character. 

It should be added that after Lee resigned his Vir- 
ginia commission he proceeded quietly to find posi- 
tions for the ofiicers who had been on his staff, and 
was arranging to enUst himself as a private in a 
cavalry company.* 

It should also be recorded that he said to Gen. 
Imboden that the South must be prepared for a 
longer war than that of the Revolution, and for still 

* Reminiscences of R. E. Lee, by Rev. J. Wm. Jones, p. i68. 



38 THE SOUL OF LEE 

greater sacrifices. To another he said the war m ight 
last ten years.* 

*When the war was over, the President of the United 
States declared that, " if the Reconstruction Bill then pend- 
ing became a law, (and it did become a law), it would be to 
all the world a justification of the contention of the South, 
that they were, in truth and in fact, fighting for their liberty; 
and, instead of branding their leaders by the dishonoring 
name of traitors against a righteous government, would elevate 
them in history to the rank of self-sacrificing patriots; con- 
secrate them to the admiration of the world; and place them 
by the side of Washington, Hampden and Sidney." 

(Andrew Johnson.) 



IV 

LEE AS A MASTER OF OFFENSIVE STRATEGY 



^^The unparalleled audacity oj his campaigns" 

— Gen. Alexander. 

"His name might he called Audacity^ — Col. Ives. 

"In the boldness and sagacity of his strategy . . . he 
resembled Napoleon himself." — Capt. Cecil Battine. 

"Lee was undoubtedly one of the greatest, if not the 
greatest soldier, who ever spoke the English tongue." 

— Col. Henderson. 

"His campaigns have much in common with those of 
Napoleon, and fascinate the reader for the same reasons." 

— London Times, 1865. 

" Lee made five campaigns in a single year; no 
other man and no other army ever did as much." 

— Col. Ehen Swift. 



IV 

LEE AS A MASTER OF OFFENSIVE STRATEGY 

During the first thirteen months of the war between 
the States Lee's services, though invaluable in the 
organization of the army,* were inconspicuous; and 
the only campaign he directed, that in West Virginia, 
was unsuccessful. He was freely and severely crit- 
icised by not a few at the South, notably by Pollard. 
But, when on June i, 1862, by reason of the wounding 
of Gen. Joseph E. Johnston, he became commander 
of the army of Northern Virginia, his mihtary genius 
burst forth like the sun from behind a cloud, and 
henceforth he became the idol of his army and indeed 
of the whole South. It is appropriate to note at this 
point that his great fame as a commander was achieved 
in less than three years of active service. 

Although now fifty-four years of age, he was in the 
full vigor of his manhood, both in mind and body, the 
very embodiment of manly grace and beauty, of 
kingly stature, "with a noble and commanding 
presence and an admirable, graceful and athletic 
figure." 

* Gen. Scott had pronounced him the best organizer in this 
country, and congratulated himself upon the fact that the 
Federal organization was well under way before Lee began 
that of the South. 

41 



42 THE SOUL OF LEE 

His face was clothed with a dignity which instantly 
commanded respect, but there was in the expression 
of his eyes a jirofoiind human sympathy, which won 
the heart. ( )iie of his latest bi{)gra])hers has well said, 
*'It cannot harm a royal soul to dwell within a royal 
body, and not Pericles nor Washington would seem 
in this more royal than was Lee."* 

Lee found the army somewhat dispirited and de- 
pressed, suffering also from a want of cooperation; 
and when a council of war was called the consensus 
of opinion favored the evacuation of its position and a 
retirement to a point nearer Richmond; but he over- 
ruled this proposal, and ordered a strong defensive 
line to be constructed on substantially the same line 
then occupied, and then prejoared to assume the 
offensive. Facing McClellan's army of 105,000 men 
(June 20, 18C2), with but 50,000, Lee called upon the 
Richmond authorities for reinforcements, and within 
three weeks his army had been increased to about 
80,000 men, and had been thoroughly organized. 
On June 26th he attacked McClellan in his entrench- 
ments and in a series of engagements covering seven 
days forced him to retreat with great loss to the shelter 
of his gunboats at Harrison's Landing on the James 
River. 

Thus Lee had at one blow raised the siege of Rich- 
mond and defeated an elaborate campaign which 
had been prepared with great care and prosecuted 
at enormous expenditure of men and material. 

* Gamaliel Bradford, p. 21. 



LEE AS A MASTER OF OFFENSIVE STRATEGY 43 

Among the fruits of his victory were the capture of 
more than 10,000 prisoners, 52 pieces of artillery, 
and 35,000 stands of small arms. But the best fruit 
of the battles was the spirit and enthusiasm created 
in the Confederate Army, and the confidence in the 
genius of Lee, which his masterly strategy had engen- 
dered in both the army and the people. 

In the operations of this his first great campaign, 
Lee showed that same aggressive energy and daring 
which characterized him throughout his career, as a 
commander — as at 2d Manassas, at Sharpsburg, at 
Chancellorsville, and at Gettysburg. Those who 
describe him as a master of defensive war, but lacking 
the qualities necessary for the offensive, are strangely 
blind to the facts of his military career. Splendid 
audacity is perhaps the most conspicuous feature of 
Lee's character as a soldier. In this his first great 
engagement, he stood in his breastworks close to 
Richmond facing McClellan's army of 70,000 on the 
south of the Chickahominy, with only 27,000 men, 
while he massed 53,000 against the Federal right on 
the north side of that river. It was by offensive, not 
defensive strategy, that he raised the siege of Rich- 
mond in those July days of 1862. 

We may pause here to note that Lee had never 
commanded an army in the field before, and the 
ill success of his West Virginia campaign had created 
doubts in many minds as to his possessing the qual- 
ities of an aggressive commander. This led Alex- 
ander, afterwards Chief of Artillery, Longstreet's 
Corps, to enquire of Col. Joseph C. Ives, of the staff 



44 THE SOUL OF LEE 

of President Jefferson Davis, whether Lee possessed 
the audacity that would be requisite for the com- 
mander of an inferior force in conflict with the superior 
force of the North, and he tells us that Ives "reined 
up his horse, stopped in the road, and said, 'Alex- 
ander, if there is one man in either army, Confederate 
or Federal, head and shoulders above every other in 
audacity, it is General Lee. His name might be 
Audacity. He will take more desperate chances and 
take them quicker than any other general in this 
country, North or South; and you will live to see it 
too.'" 

This remarkable divination of Lee's character as a 
soldier was more than justified by this his first cam- 
paign. Both his strategy and his tactics were defi- 
nitely and boldly offensive. Even before Stonewall 
Jackson had brought his amazing campaign in the 
valley of Virginia to a close, — on June 8th — Lee had 
written him of his design to bring him down to attack 
McClellan's right wing, and had made suggestions 
as to how he might mislead the enemy. Secretly 
and swiftly, as an eagle swooping down upon his prey, 
that splendid officer executed the orders of his Chief, — 
and yet, for some unexplained reason, once upon the 
ground, Jackson was neither as swift nor as effective 
as was his wont. 

There were other failures in this campaign which 
detracted from the completeness of Lee's victory, — 
failures of staff oflicers, failures of commanders, mis- 
takes of judgment, — all the faults to be expected in a 
new army not yet thoroughly compacted and dis- 



LEE AS A MASTER OF OFFENSR^ STRATEGY 45 

ciplined; but throughout, from the moment when the 
assault on the Union right was ordered till McClellan 
was driven under the protecting wings of his gun- 
boats at Harrison's Landing, the genius of Lee's 
offensive strategy and offensive tactics was con- 
spicuous. 

But a new campaign was now determined upon. 
McClellan was still encamped on the James River 
but two marches away from the Confederate capital, 
and he commanded a brave and well-equipped army 
of 101,000 men. Instead of attacking the Federal 
army in its strongly fortified position Lee resolved 
to march north and threaten Washington and thus 
draw McClellan out of his trenches and relieve Rich- 
mond of danger. The campaign that followed was 
one of the most brilliant of the war, and exhibited 
the daring strategy of Lee to the best advantage. 
Gen. Pope was his adversary, — Pope whose "head- 
quarters" were to be "in the saddle," and who let 
his army know that "lines of retreat" and "bases of 
supply" were words which had no place in his vocab- 
ulary. Stonewall Jackson with 8000 men met Pope's 
advance forces at Slaughter Mountain near Cedar 
Run, and defeated them.* 

This decided the Washington authorities to order 
McClellan to evacuate the Peninsula and move his 
Army to Washington. Lee was now free to move 

* The losses in this battle were as follows : 

Confederates, killed, wounded and missing. . . . 1367 
Federals, killed, wounded and missing 2381 



46 THE SOUL OF LEE 

against Pope with the bulk of his army. In the won- 
derful campaign that followed we see to advantage the 
splendid combination of Lee and Jackson cooperating 
for the success of the South. It has been well said by 
a discriminating Northern writer that "Lee and 
Jackson probably formed as wonderful a pair of mili- 
tary geniuses as ever existed." 

It is no part of the purpose of these pages to under- 
take a detailed discussion of the campaigns of Lee, — 
with the possible exception of Gettysburg,* but rather 
to enable the reader to see what manner of man Lee 
was in the clash of battle, and in the conception and 
execution of his great campaigns. 

Lee, arriving at Jackson's camp on August 15th, 
at once saw an opportunity of striking Pope a decisive 
blow and cutting off his retreat to Washington, and 
promptly issued the orders and made the disposi- 
tions to carry out his plan. Unfortunately, however, 
a staff officer with a copy of the order on his person 
was captured, and the plan thus revealed to Pope, 
who lost no time in moving his army out of its perilous 
position. 

Fortune, which in this had favored Pope, now 
reciprocally favored the Southern commander; for 
Stuart, in a bold raid in Pope's rear, captured the 
latter's private despatch book, which revealed the 
fact that the reinforcements which would reach Pope 
within five days would raise his army to nearly 130,000 
men. 

* See Appendix. 



LEE AS A MASTER OF OFFENSIVE STRATEGY 47 

As Lee's army was little over 54,000 men, his situa- 
tion was almost desperate, unless he could promptly 
strike an effective blow. This, with his usual quick 
decision, he resolved to do. His plan was a daring 
one. Jackson with about 22,000 infantry and 2000 
cavalry was to make a circuitous march of over 50 
miles, and seize Pope's depot of suppHes, 24 miles in 
his rear. He himself, with Longstreet and 30,000 
men, would hold the line of the Rappahannock, while 
Jackson was making his forced march. By this 
hazardous manoeuvre Lee would divide his army in 
two, leaving Pope's army of 80,000 men midway 
between the two halves. No wonder a very high 
Federal authority writes : 

"The disparity between Pope's force and that of Jackson is 
so enormous that it is impossible not to be amazed at the 
audacity of the Confederate general, in thus risking an en- 
counter in which the very existence of Jackson's command 
would be imperiled." * 

Col. Henderson, Stonewall Jackson's biographer, 
remarks: "We have record of few enterprises of 
greater daring than that which was there decided 
on. To risk cause and country, name and reputation, 
on a single throw, and to abide the issue with un- 
flinching heart, is the supreme exhibition of the 
soldier's fortitude." 

We cannot here recapitulate the marvellous story 
of this battle, — how Lee, with Longstreet, by hard 

* Ropes, History of the Civil War. Vol. II, p. 124. 



48 THE SOUL OF LEE 

marching and harder fighting at length effected a 
junction with Jackson at Thoroughfare Gap; how 
the Federal soldiers despite their valor were repulsed 
with bloody losses in six assaults; how Jackson's 
men, when their ammunition ran low, stood on the 
railroad embankment and hurled stones at their 
attackers; how, at a critical moment, Longstreet 
opened upon Pope's lines a flanking fire of artillery 
which disorganized the Federals and threw them into 
confusion, and the great battle was won. Within a 
few days afterwards the whole Federal army took 
refuge within the fortified works about Alexandria, 
having lost, killed, wounded and missing nearly 
15,000 men, — the Confederate loss being something 
over 9000. 

This second battle of Manassas exhibits one of 
Lee's "unjustifiable audacities," as his critics say. 
"The rules of war," says Ropes, "allow of no such 
dangerous movement as Jackson's." No, but Lee 
was a law unto himself in war. His necessities com- 
pelled him to take enormous risks. The results 
justified his audacious strategy. Henderson — than 
whom we have no superior critic — says, "The cam- 
paign against Pope has seldom been surpassed." 

The invasion of Maryland was the next scene in the 
great drama, followed soon by the terrific battle of 
Sharpsburg, or Antietam. It was the 5th of Sep- 
tember when the Confederate legions crossed the 
Potomac and took position at Frederick, Md., be- 
hind the Monocacy River. They had been rein- 
forced by the divisions of McLaws and D. H. Hill, 



LEE AS A MASTER OF OFFENSIVE STRATEGY 49 

which had been left at Richmond; but the long, 
forced marches and the hard service the army had 
endured during the five weeks' campaign since the 
battles around Richmond began, had greatly thinned 
their ranks. Large numbers of the men were bare- 
footed. "The soldier was still there with his gun 
and his ammunition — but his clothes — from the hat 
on his head to his shoeless feet — were tattered and 
torn." The people of Maryland wondered that such 
a tatterdemalion army as this could have won such 
renown. Even "Stonewall" Jackson disappointed 
their expectations as they noted his coarse homespun 
uniform and his old slouch hat. Lee, on the other 
hand, with his noble and heroic bearing, the beau 
ideal of a great commander, elicited universal admira- 
tion. 

Lee's first move was the investment and capture of 
Harper's Ferry with twelve thousand troops, seventy- 
three pieces of artillery, thirteen thousand stands of 
small arms, and immense supplies. This was the 
achievement of his matchless heutenant, Stonewall 
Jackson. And now, we come to the fierce and bloody 
battle of Sharpsburg (Antietam) where again the 
genius of Lee was brilliantly displayed, and also that 
same sublime audacity which was one of his most 
conspicuous characteristics. The story of the lost 
order which fell into McClellan's hands by a strange 
accident need not be repeated here, but, by common 
consent, it is agreed among critics, that the revela- 
tion it made of the positions occupied by the Confed- 
erate Army, — especially the absence of Jackson at 



50 THE SOUL OF LEE 

Harper's Ferry — ought to have enabled the Union 
commander to destroy Lee's army in detail. 

But the tactical genius of Lee and the indomitable 
resolution of his ragged troops prevented such a con- 
summation. Gen. McClellan reports that he had in 
the field on September 17th, 87,164 men of all arms. 
To this great force Gen. Lee was able to oppose only 
35,000 men, — such had been the immense depletion 
of his ranks through the exhaustion of his army. 
Thousands and thousands of stragglers had been left 
behind in Virginia — most of them barefooted. It 
was fortunate for Lee that hardly more than 57,000 
of McClellan 's troops were actually engaged in the 
battle. Nearly 30,000 of his men did not fire a shot. 
It should also be remembered that, on the other 
hand, A. P. Hill's division did not arrive on the field 
to support Lee till the afternoon, having left Harper's 
Ferry at 7 a.m. 

No battle of the war, perhaps, exhibits in stronger 
light the splendid tenacity and valor of American 
manhood, North and South, than this battle of Sharps- 
burg. It exhibits also more vividly than perhaps 
any other the glorious and invincible audacity of the 
soul of Lee. 

When the long, terrible day of bloody conflict was 
over, and the Confederate generals, one after another, 
gave in to the commander-in-chief the story of their 
sanguinary losses, the anxious question was asked, 
"Shall this army stand its ground, or shall it retreat 
into Virginia?" Not a voice was raised in favor of 
the former alternative. Even the iron resolution 



LEE AS A MASTER OF OFFENSIVE STRATEGY 51 

of Jackson seemed to yield before the peril of another 
battle, with thinned and exhausted ranks, and a 
great river behind them, besides an army vastly 
superior in numbers before them. 

But from one indomitable heart the hope of vic- 
tory had not yet vanished.* In the deep silence of 
the night, more oppressive than the stunning roar of 
battle, Lee, still mounted, stood on the high road to 
the Potomac, and as general after general rode in 
wearily from the front, he asked quietly of each, 
"How is it on your part of the line? " Each told the 
same tale: their men were worn out; the enemy's num- 
bers were overwhelming ; there was nothing left but to 
retreat across the Potomac before daylight. Even 
Jackson had no other counsel to offer. His report 
was not the less impressive for his quiet and respectful 
tone. He had had to contend, he said, against the 
heaviest odds he had ever met. Many of his di- 
visional and brigade commanders were dead or 
wounded, and his loss had been severe. Hood, who 
came next, was quite unmanned. He exclaimed that 
he had no men left! ''Great God," cried Lee, with 
an excitement he had not yet displayed, "where is 
the splendid division you had this morning? " "They 
are lying on the field where you sent them," was 
the reply, " for few have straggled. My division has 
been almost wiped out." 

"After all had given their opinion, there was an 

* The next day Lee laid before Jackson a plan for attack, 
but after careful consideration it was abandoned. 



52 THE SOUL OF LEE 

appalling silence, which seemed to last for several 
minutes, and then General Lee, rising erect in his 
stirrups, said, 'Gentlemen, we will not cross the 
Potomac tonight. You will go to your respective 
commands, strengthen your lines; send two officers 
from each brigade towards the ford to collect your 
stragglers. Many have come in. I have had the 
proper steps taken to collect all the men who are in 
the rear. If McClellan wants to fight in the morning, 
I will give him battle again. Go!' Without a 
word of remonstrance the group broke up, leaving 
their great commander alone with his responsibility."* 

But McClellan did not want to fight. He had had 
enough. Lee's battle gauge was not taken up. 
"Of General Lee's management of the battle (of 
Sharpsburg) there is nothing but praise to be said." 
So writes Mr. John Codman Ropes. He also says, 
"The Confederate infantry did not exceed 31,200 
men, or thereabouts, while . . . the only troops put 
in by McClellan numbered about 46,000." (Troops 
not put in 24,000.) He further says, "It's Ukely more 
men were killed and wounded on the 17 th of Sep- 
tember than on any single day in the whole war." 
General Alexander says, "It was the bloodiest battle 
ever fought upon this continent." 

The Confederate loss he puts at 8000 men; that 
of the Union Army at 12,410 men. 

Major Steele says of the Antietam campaign, 

* Henderson, Life oj Jackson, Vol. II, pp. 322-3. The above 
account was given by Gen. Stephen D. Lee, an eyewitness. 



LEE AS A MASTER OF OFFENSIVE STRATEGY 53 

Lee had only 55,000 men,* with little hope of reinforce- 
ments; while McClellan had nearly 90,000 with strong rein- 
forcements on the way. — American Campaigns, p. 280. 

The same accomplished critic further says: 

From beginning to end of the campaign the Confederate 
commander's conduct was characterized by boldness, resolu- 
tion, and quickness. — Id., p. 283. 

To another, and a crucial, example of the audacity 
of the soul of Lee let us now briefly advert. We refer 
to the daring strategy which he employed at the 
battle of Chancellorsville, where he stood with 
15,000 men, under Anderson and McLaws, facing 
Hooker's great army of 73,000 while Jackson with 
22,600 men made his great flank march to fall upon 
the right wing of Hooker. What glorious audacity 
it was! Unjustifiable, perhaps some will say, — 
contrary to sound principles of war. Yes, but Lee 
was a law unto himself in the art of war. He knew 
the maxims of the approved masters of strategy and 
he appHed them; but there came crises when he rode 
straight over them to attain his ends. He acknowl- 
edged that he took fearful risks, but under the con- 
ditions that sometimes encompassed him it was often 
true that the only hope of success lay in taking des- 
perate chances. 

We cannot write of Chancellorsville without paus- 
ing a moment at the mention of Stonewall Jackson, 

* But actually in the firing lines Lee had not more than 35,000 
as stated above. 



54 THE SOUL OF LEE 

whose name will forever be associated with the great 
Confederate victory there. If ever there was a 
double star in the firmament of military glory, it 
was in the case of these two great soldiers. Their 
name and fame will ever be closely intertwined, — 
so closely that we can hardly think of or understand 
the achievements of the one without the other, — so 
closely that when the historian turns the telescope 
of his observation upon the one, he always sees the 
other by his side, — so closely that the glory of the 
one on the battlefield is constantly mingled with the 
glory of the other; and thus we see them, as at 
2d Manassas and at Chancellorsville, not as two 
illustrious leaders, and strategists, but as one — a 
true binary star in the firmament of history. 

Lee's confidence in Jackson was unbounded. 
Jackson's opinion of Lee is seen in his well-known 
declaration that "Lee is a phenomenon. He is the 
only man whom I would follow blindfold." When 
Jackson was wounded Lee wrote him: 

Coiild I have directed events, I should have chosen for the 
good of the country to have been disabled in your stead. I 
congratulate you on the victory, which is due to your skill and 
energy. 

When this was read to him, Jackson said, 
Better that ten Jacksons should fall than one Lee. 

And when Lee heard Jackson was worse, he said, 

Tell him that I am praying for him as I believe I never 
prayed for myself. 



LEE AS A MASTER OF OFFENSIVE STRATEGY 55 

There was another deed of daring inspired by the 
soul of Lee at Chancellorsville which is sometimes 
overlooked. At lo a.m. on the third day of the con- 
flict, after Jackson had fallen, the army of Lee which 
was preparing an assault on Hooker's third line of 
entrenchments — a blow which must have been fatal 
to the Federal Army, — was arrested by the news that 
Sedgwick had captured Marye's heights at Fred- 
ericksburg and was marching with his 25,000 men 
on Lee's rear. 

This was disquieting news indeed. Lee had in- 
tended that Early should interpose between him and 
Sedgwick. Instead, Early had retreated on the 
Plank road in the direction of Richmond. Thus he 
had become separated from Lee, and could render him 
no assistance. It was a critical moment; the battle 
was not yet won. On the contrary, it might easily 
be turned into defeat for Lee, with Hooker in his 
front and Sedgwick in his rear. 

But the genius of Lee was equal to the emergency. 
He resolved on a movement ''even more daring," 
says the Comte de Paris, "than that which the day 
previous had brought Jackson upon the flank of the 
enemy." Suspending his attack on Hooker, he turned 
with McLaws' and Anderson's divisions, advanced 
swiftly against Sedgwick, attacked him, and drove 
him back over the river. 

By general consent the battle of Chancellorsville 
is acknowledged the most brilliant of all Lee's achieve- 
ments. By his consummate strategy and by the 
celerity, skill and audacity with which Jackson coop- 



56 THE SOUL OF LEE 

erated with his plans, he was able with an army of 
not more than 57,000 men of all arms to foil and hurl 
back staggering and broken Hooker's splendid army 
which Swinton, the Northern historian, estimates at 
132,000 men. Col. Charles Marshall of his staff thus 
describes the cHmax of the victory on the third day: 

"In the midst of this scene General Lee, mounted 
on that horse which we all remember so well, rode to 
the front of his advancing battalions. His presence 
was the signal for one of those uncontrollable out- 
bursts of enthusiasm which none can appreciate who 
have not witnessed them. The fierce soldiers, with 
their faces blackened with the smoke of battle, the 
wounded, crawHng with feeble limbs from the fury 
of the devouring flames, all seemed possessed with a 
common impulse. One long, unbroken cheer, in 
which the feeble cry of those who lay helpless on 
the earth blended with the strong voices of those 
who still fought, rose high above the roar of the 
battle, and hailed the presence of the victorious chief. 
He sat in the full realization of all that soldier's 
dream of — triumph."* 

The careful study of this one battle is sufficient 
to justify Col. Henderson's opinion that Lee was 
"undoubtedly one of the greatest, if not the greatest 
soldier, who ever spoke the Enghsh tongue." 

We may compare with this EngHsh soldier's words, 
those of Theodore Roosevelt in his Life of Benton 
(p. 38). "Lee will undoubtedly rank as without any 

* Quoted by Miss E. Mason in her Life of Lee, p. 361. 



LEE AS A MASTER OF OFFENSIVE STRATEGY 57 

exception the greatest of all the great captains that 
the English-speaking people have brought forth." 

The battle of Gettysburg, following Chancellors- 
ville at an interval of only two months, will occur to 
every student of Lee's campaigns as a vivid illustra- 
tion of his characteristic aggressiveness both in 
strategy and tactics. He took the offensive on each 
of the three days of battle — only faihng at last to win 
a decisive victory for two reasons,— first by the lack 
of coordination in the attacks made by his com- 
manders, and second, by the strange failure of his 
chief lieutenants to carry out his orders promptly and 
exactly. While his conduct of this battle has been 
severely criticised it is acknowledged by some of the 
most competent critics, such as Hunt and Henderson 
and Battine, that had his orders been carried out he 
should have achieved an overwhelming success. 
''There can be no doubt," says Capt. Battine, "that 
a prompt employment of all his available resources 
would have placed victory within Lee's grasp." 

He further says, " There can be no doubt that 
the opportunity was the brightest the Confederates 
had made for themselves since they let McClellan 
escape from the banks of the Chickahominy." 

Chas. Francis Adams pronounces the campaign 
" timely, admirably designed, energetically executed, 
and brought to a close with consummate military 
skill." Henderson says Lee lost the battle of Gettys- 
burg not by his defective strategy, or his errors of 
tactics, but because he suffered his second in com- 
mand to argue instead of marching. 



58 THE SOUL OF LEE 

The great assault delivered against the Union center 
on the third day was one of the most daring enter- 
prises in the history of war, and exhibits that splendid 
audacity that marked Lee's whole career as a soldier 
from his service under Scott in Mexico to the day when 
Jie yielded to the inevitable and surrendered the 
remnant of the Army of Northern Virginia at Appo- 
mattox. Nor was it a reckless or unreasoned daring. 
The condition of the Federal Army after its severe 
losses and the impairment of its morale on the first 
two days of the conflict, coupled with the splendid 
courage and indomitable resolution of the soldiers 
of Lee justified the expectation of success; and had 
the glorious charge been made in the morning as 
ordered; and had it been supported as it might, and 
could, and should have been — in other words, had 
not the orders of the commanding general been dis- 
obeyed, — there is little doubt that the Federal Army 
would have been cut in twain, and driven in disaster 
from the field. 

It was not the plan of Gen. Lee that that column of 
12,000 men should have been thrown unsupported 
against that formidable position. His order was that 
the divisions of Hood and McLaws should have ad- 
vanced in support of Pickett and that Pettigrew and 
Anderson should also have cooperated.* Most cer- 
tainly it was not the intention of this great com- 
mander that four-fifths of his army should have 
looked idly on while one-fifth charged into the jaws 
of death. 

* See Long's Memoirs of Lee, p. 294. 



LEE AS A MASTER OF OFFENSIVE STRATEGY 59 

The failure of Gen. Ewell to seize Cemetery Hill on 
the afternoon of the first day's battle has new light 
shed upon it by an incident recounted in the following 
extract of a letter addressed to the author by Major 
W. A. Anderson, of Lexington, Virginia, February 
lo, 1916: 

"What you say about General Ewell's fatal inac- 
tion on the afternoon and evening of July ist is 
fully confirmed by what Doctor Samuel B. Morrison 
told me in his lifetime. 

" Doctor Morrison was a surgeon of high rank in 
Ewell's Corps. His statement to me a number of 
years ago was as follows: 

" On the afternoon of the ist of July, 1863, Dr. 
Morrison received a summons to go to Gen. Ewell, 
who he was informed had been wounded. He found 
Gen. Ewell lying by the roadside near the Town of 
Gettysburg attended by some members of his staff. 

" Dr. Morrison dismounted and approached Gen. 
Ewell, remarking, ' General, I hope you are not badly 
hurt.' To which the General replied, 'Doctor, I 
have a compound communicated fracture of my 
leg, ' — and then, after a brief pause, adding with a 
twinkle in his eyes, — 'but it is my wooden leg.' 

" The Doctor told me he found Gen. Ewell very 
pale, and on taking his pulse, and examining his con- 
dition, he discovered that he was 'suffering from 
shock,' but was not seriously injured by the blow 
from a fragment of a shell (I think it was) which 
had shattered his wooden leg, and doubtless painfully 
bruised the stump of that amputated limb. 



60 THE SOUL OF LEE 

" Dr. Morrison's examination of the General soon 
satisfied him that any injury he had received was 
slight, and he told Gen. Ewell that he was 'all right,' 
and would in a little while entirely rally from the 
slight shock from the shattering of his wooden leg. 

" Dr. Morrison remained with Gen. Ewell for some 
Httle time, how long he did not inform me. 

" While he was still there. Col. Walter H. Taylor, 
of Gen. Lee's staff, rode up, and saluted Gen. Ewell, 
and after learning that he was not seriously hurt 
delivered the following message from Gen. Lee, as 
nearly as I can recall Dr. Morrison's language: 

' General, — General Lee desires me to present you 
his compliments, and to express his hope that you will 
see your way clear to press the pursuit of the enemy 
who seem to be retreating in disorder.' 

" In some such language Col. Taylor communicated 
Gen. Lee's views and wish to Gen. Ewell. 

'' Gen. Ewell made some courteous but not entirely 
definite reply, and Col. Taylor rode off. 

" After a little while, however, Gen. Ewell remarked 
to the members of his staff and other officers about 
him as follows: 

My boys have had a long and hard day. They 
have had nothing to eat since the early morning, and 
are hungry, hot and tired. I will let them get some- 
thing to eat and a rest tonight, and we will take the 
enemy before breakfast in the morning.' 

" Dr. Morrison's account of the occurrence referred 
to was given me some time, several years perhaps, 
before Col, Walter Taylor's book was pubUshed in 



LEE AS A MASTER OF OFFENSIVE STRATEGY 61 

in which there is an account of the same memorable 
incident." 

This narrative, never pubHshed before, explains 
Ewell's failure to seize Cemetery Hill, so easily within 
his grasp that afternoon. The shock which he re- 
ceived, and the painful bruising of his amputated 
limb, was in all probability responsible for his fatal 
postponement of the attack which would have given 
the Confederates the hill and with it victory at 
Gettysburg.* 

We may pause a moment at this point to ask the 
reader to recall a battle which bears some striking 
resemblances and contrasts to the battle of Gettys- 
burg, the battle of Solferino. It was fought June 24, 
1859, only three years before. Not since Leipsig in 
18 13 had such a stupendous conflict taken place. 
About 270,000 men were engaged, the Austrians 
having nearly 130,000, the French and Piedmontese 
almost 139,000. The losses were appalling. All 
Europe stood aghast at the carnage. Napoleon III 
was overwhelmed as he rode over the field the next 
day and witnessed the frightful scenes of death and 
agony. And yet the killed and wounded at Gettys- 

* Major Steele says of Gettysburg, "On the morning of the 
2d of July Lee had on the ground thirty-three brigades — all 
of his infantry except four brigades. At seven o'clock Meade 
had thirty-nine brigades, at nine o'clock forty-one, and at 12 
o'clock forty-three. On the morning of the 3d, after Pickett 
had come up with his division, Lee had only thirty-seven 
brigades; Meade had fifty-one brigades." — American Cam- 
paigns, I, 390. 



62 THE SOUL OF LEE 

burg were more in number than at Solferino, while 
the aggregate of the Union and Confederate Armies 
was more than one-third smaller than the forces 
engaged in the famous Italian battlefield, — about 
170,000 at Gettysburg, — about 270,000 at Solferino. 
As to the question, "Was Gettysburg a Federal 
victory!" it may be sufficient to quote the words of 
Gen. Meade in a letter to his wife, "I never claimed a 
victory, though I stated that Lee was defeated in his 
efforts to destroy my army." — Life and Letters, vol. 
2, p. I33-* 

The Wilderness campaign of 1864 furnishes yet 
another example of the aggressive daring which was 
the most striking characteristic of the strategy and 
the tactics of Lee. 

Facing Grant's Army of 140,000 men (see the 
Report of the Secretary of War to the 39th Congress, 
vol. I, 1865-6, pp. 3-5, 55) with barely 64,000 men 
of all arms, — under which circumstances a com- 
mander whose genius inclined to defensive strategy 

* The author invites particular attention to the discussion 
in the Appendix of this much misunderstood campaign. 
It is there shown we think, conclusively, that Gen. Ewell's 
failure to seize Cemetery Hill, as Lee directed, on the first 
day of the battle, — Gen. Longstreet's inexcusable delay in his 
attack on the second day, — and the same officer's double 
departure from the orders of his chief on the third day, — 
were responsible for the loss of a great victory. Lee':; genius 
did not fail in his plan of battle, nor was his strategy at 
fault. The failure was in the execution of his plan by his 
subordinates. 



LEE AS A MASTER OF OFFENSIVE STRATEGY 63 

would naturally manoeuvre to avoid a general engage- 
ment, — Lee did not hesitate to pursue a policy the 
very reverse of Fabian. Owing to Longstreet's un- 
necessary failure to arrive on the battle front May 
5th, Lee gave orders to Ewell and Hill not to bring 
on a general engagement, but to oppose the passage 
of the Union Army. Two divisions, 15,000 strong, 
heroically resisted five Union divisions? 45,000 strong, 
and completely foiled their repeated assaults.* But 
next morning the divisions of Heth and Wilcox were 
overpowered and compelled to retire before Longstreet 
could put his corps into the fight. It was then that 
Lee, seeing the threat of disaster, dashed among the 
fugitives and personally appealed to them to rally. 
His presence as he rode along the lines was most 
inspiring. Then, Longstreet having arrived and put 
his troops into battle, Lee put himself at the head 
of the Texans as they bravely advanced to save the 
day; but the soldiers cried out to him to "go to the 
rear," promising to restore the hne and drive the 
enemy back. It was done. The Confederate ad- 
vance was irresistible. This was the first of three 
occasions in the Wilderness campaign that Lee imder- 
took to lead his charging columns in person, viz., on 
May 6th, loth, and i2th.t Thus no sooner had 
Grant with his immense army, outnumbering the 

* See Taylor's Four Years with General Lee, p. 127, 
First Edition. 

t See for May 6th, Alexander's Memoirs, p. 503; for 
May loth, Taylor's Four Years with Lee, p. 130; for 
May 12th, Gordon's Reminiscences, p. 278. 



64 THE SOUL OF LEE 

Confederate commander much more than two to one 
(140,000 to 64,000), crossed the Rapidan and plunged 
into the tangled maze of the wilderness, than Lee 
boldly advanced and struck him two staggering blows 
on the same day, May 6th, one at 11 a.m. under the 
leadership of Longstreet, as just mentioned, the other 
under Gordon at 6 p.m. The first was an attack on 
Grant's right flank by four of Longstreet's brigades. 
The success was complete. 

"Brigade after brigade was routed and rolled up." 
In vain did the brave Hancock strive to stay the 
panic. Longstreet with five fresh brigades was ready 
to follow it up by a frontal attack and drive the Fed- 
erals into the Rapidan. Two full corps had already 
been utterly routed. The rout of the rest of the army 
seemed assured when these five brigades should be 
unleashed. Longstreet was already receiving con- 
gratulations when, at the critical moment, he fell 
severely wounded by the fire of his own men — just as 
Jackson had fallen almost exactly a year before, and 
near the same spot, while victoriously executing a 
similar movement ! 

The second blow which Lee gave Grant on that 
6th day of May was delivered by Gen. John B. Gor- 
don a little before sundown, and was directed against 
the right of the Federal Army, under the direction of 
Gen. Lee himself. It was immediately and splen- 
didly successful, and the news of it carried consterna- 
tion to Grant's headquarters' staff and the soul of 
Grant himself; but night prevented the consumma- 
tion of the defeat; and saved the Federal Army. 



LEE AS A MASTER OF OFFENSIVE STRATEGY 65 

Had it not been for the stubborn and unreasoning 
opposition of Gen. Early, this assault would have 
been made early in the day, in which case over- 
whelming disaster would have overtaken Gen. Grant. 

Referring to this blow deUvered by Gen. Gordon, 
Major Gen. James Harrison Wilson, who was very 
close to Gen. Grant, tells us in his book Under the 
Old Flag, vol. I, p. 390, that an officer who had been 
with Grant through the whole war and "had seen him 
in every battle," stated to him that the news from 
the right "gave the impression that an overwhelming 
disaster had befallen our line," and that as officer 
after officer came in with additional details, it became 
apparent "that the General was confronted by the 
greatest crisis of his fife." It was a disaster "which 
threatened to overwhelm his army and put an end 
to his career." Gen. Wilson adds that "both Raw- 
lins and Bowers concurred in the statement that 
Grant went into his tent, and throwing himself face 
downward on his cot, gave way to the greatest 
emotion." And they added that "not till it became 
apparent that the enemy was not pressing his advan- 
tage did he entirely recover his perfect composure."* 

The facts thus briefly recalled show how essentially 
offensive was the military genius of Lee. In this 
Wilderness campaign, as it is called, from the Rapidan 
River to Richmond, although Lee's strategy was 

* He further says " it was an episode of terrible import fol- 
lowed by a iiight of anxiety which none of us will ever forget," 
-p. 387. 



66 THE SOUL OF LEE 

wisely defensive, yet his tactics were in many cases 
boldly offensive. Indeed, as military critics have 
been free to acknowledge, his tactics were consistently 
offensive up to the very day of the surrender at 
Appomattox. 

As to his defensive strategy in this campaign of 
the Wilderness a high authority has said, *'In this 
only a few of his detractors have seen evidence of 
failing courage. Actually, it is only another exhi- 
bition of his genius which enabled him to see that the 
day for those tactics was passed. His unerring per- 
ception told him that his only chance lay in wearing 
out his enemy, and he would not be tempted into a 
false move."* 

And now finally another example of Lee's boldness 
in offensive strategy. Right in the midst of his 
death grapple with Grant before Petersburg, he 
despatches Gen. Early to the Valley of Virginia with 
a division taken from his little army in the trenches, 
with orders to cross the Potomac, threaten Wash- 
ington, and "insult with the fires of his bivouacs the 
Capital City." 

* Referring to Longstreet's failure to arrive on the Wilder- 
ness field May 5th, one of the critics remarks, "Longstreet 
was behindhand again, but through no fault of his." This is 
an error. Had Longstreet taken the right road (4 p.m. June 
4th) he should easily have arrived by the afternoon, or noon, 
of the 5th, having only twenty miles to march. Lee had sent 
an officer "to stay with him and show him the roads," but 
Longstreet discharged him, and so took the wrong road, 
"consuming a day and a half of precious time." — Life of Gen. 
Lee by Fitzhugh Lee, p. 331. 



V 

LEE AS A MASTER OF DEFENSIVE 
STRATEGY 



Napoleon's seventy-third maxim says: 

''The first qualification in a general-in-chief is a 
cool head — that is a head which receives just impressions, 
and estimates things and objects at their real value. 
He must not allow himself to be elated by good news, or 
depressed by bad.'' 

"This campaign alone would entitle him to the high 
place he justly holds among the great Commanders of 
the world." — Col. Livermore. 

" The mighty campaign of 1864 before Richmond 
was as much a masterpiece of defensive warfare as 
Napoleon's campaign of 18 14." — Capt. Cecil Battine. 



V 

LEE AS A MASTER OF DEFENSIVE 
STRATEGY 

Lee was skilful in the use of the shield as well as 
of the sword. His campaigns furnish some of the 
most brilliant examples of defensive strategy and 
tactics to be found in the history of war. Of these 
the battle of Fredericksburg is a striking instance. 
On December ii and 12, 1862, Gen. Burnside crossed 
the Rappahannock at Fredericksburg, and pre- 
pared to assault the Confederate lines. Eyewitnesses 
describe the scene presented by the Army of the 
Potomac on the morning of the 13th as an imposing 
and glorious spectacle. It was, by the testimony of 
its commander, 100,000 strong, and as it advanced 
in soHd ranks, with colors flying and drums beating 
and the sun ghttering on its bayonets, it presented a 
panorama at once beautiful and terrible. 

But Lee had skilfully selected his defensive lines, 
and these had been protected by hastily erected 
earthworks. Such was the strength of the position 
and such the skill with which the artillery was han- 
dled, and such the steadiness of the Southern infan- 
try that terrible havoc was wrought in the ranks of 
the brave Federal Army. Gallantly they advanced, 
not once but over and over again, now on the right, 
now on the left; but their gallantry was all to no 

69 



70 THE SOUL OF LEE 

purpose. Those fine divisions of brave Americans 
were shattered and at last demoralized by the deadly 
Confederate fire — and the battle of Fredericksburg 
went into history a splendid proof of Lee's genius in 
defensive warfare. Of the 78,000 men of all arms 
under his command a large proportion was not 
actively engaged. The Confederate losses were a 
Uttle over 5000; those of the Federals over 12,600. 
Burnside's entire force present for duty on December 
loth, in the three grand divisions, was 118,952. 

The most supreme example of Lee's genius in 
defensive strategy and tactics is seen in the cam- 
paign against Grant in 1864, culminating in the long 
and bitterly contested siege of Petersburg. Though 
strategically defensive it was often tactically offen- 
sive. Attention may be briefly focussed upon some of 
the remarkable features of this long and terrific 
struggle. Lee was grappling with Grant with an 
army less than half the size of his. It was 64,000 
against 140,000. To this superiority in numbers 
was added a great superiority in munitions and 
equipment and artillery. Moreover, the Union 
commander had at his disposal scientific helps which 
were quite lacking to Lee. His signal system was 
very perfect. ''At every halt of the army tele- 
graphic wires were laid along the whole line so that 
in a short time after encamping each corps and 
division was connected by a telegraphic network, 
making of the whole extended army a single body 
under instant control of the commander through 
these outstretching iron nerves." 



LEE AS A MASTER OF DEFENSIVE STRATEGY 71 

Consider also the extraordinary features of the 
region where these sanguinary battles took place. 
The Wilderness where the two armies closed in a 
death grapple three days (May 4-7) was a jungle of 
tangled brushwood so dense that the men were invis- 
ible to each other at half musket range. It was "a 
region of gloom and the shadow of death." So dense 
was the thicket that both cavalry and artillery were 
almost useless— it was a battle of the infantry alone. 
Sometimes their volleys set fire to the woods, or even 
the breastworks, which would become a mass of 
seething fire. 

And now see with what consummate skill Lee met 
and foiled Grant at every turn. It was the Union 
commander's constant effort to march by the flank 
and place his army between Lee and Richmond, but 
notwithstanding his immense superiority in numbers, 
he was never able to accomplish this, nor to break 
permanently through the Confederate fines, though 
he constantly assailed them with great skill and deter- 
mination. At the close of the three days tremen- 
dous struggle in the Wilderness Grant had failed in 
his objective, and his losses had been more than 
20,000. Lee, too, had lost heavily — 7750 men 
(Livermore's estimate), but his veteran army was 
unshaken, and still stoutly barred Grant's way. 

Then the Union commander made a rapid night 
march to Spottsylvania C. H. — only to find that 
Lee had anticipated his move and was there in force 
before him, — to the great surprise of the general in 
command. 



72 THE SOUL OF LEE 

Lee's army should surely have been fifteen miles 
in the rear! Instead, there it was right across Grant's 
line of advance to Richmond! The Confederate 
chieftain by bold and skilful strategy had marched 
quite around the Army of the Potomac, and stood 
ready to receive its assaults. These were not slow 
in developing and were deHvered with that immense 
energy which characterized Gen. Grant. On the 
loth of May two assaults were directed against Lee's 
lines, — at lo a.m. and again at 3 p.m. — only to meet a 
bloody repulse. These were, however, only pre- 
liminary to the main assault at 5 p.m. which also was 
repulsed with enormous loss. But still the iron will 
of the Union commander would not accept defeat. 
He organized a fourth attack which was hurled back 
with even greater loss. When the day closed be- 
tween 5000 and 6000 Union soldiers lay dead and 
wounded on the field, while the Confederate loss was 
comparatively small. Both armies had fought with 
splendid courage. Only at one point had success 
attended the Federal attacks. Part of Ewell's 
line was broken by Sedgwick, and the affair might 
have resulted in serious disaster had not Lee put 
himself at the head of the counter-charging column, 
and so inspired the men that they rushed to the 
attack with such irresistible elan that the works were 
speedily retaken, and impending disaster averted. 

Another partial success was achieved on the 12 th 
of May when Hancock, aided by the darkness of 
the night and a thick fog in the early morning, 
broke through Lee's lines, capturing Major General 



LEE AS A MASTER OF DEFENSIVE STRATEGY 73 

Johnson and his entire division with about twenty 
pieces of artillery. It was a desperate moment for 
the Confederate Army, — it had been cut in twain — 
and again disaster was averted by the personal valor 
of Lee, who rode to the head of the column that was 
rushed forward to recover the lost line, but was 
" ordered to the rear " by Gen. Gordon and his gal- 
lant men. Terrible was the battle that followed and 
that raged from daylight until dark, but at last the 
Union soldiers were compelled to give up the con- 
test. Ten thousand of them had fallen on that 
fateful day. Swinton, the Northern historian, thus 
describes the struggle at the bloody salient: 

Of all the struggles of the war, this was perhaps the fiercest 
and most deadly. Frequently throughout the conflict, so 
clo;se was the fight that the rival standards were planted on 
opposite sides of the breastworks. The enemies' most savage 
sallies were directed to retake the famous salient, which was 
now become an angle of death and presented a spectacle 
ghastly and terrible. On the Confederate side of the works 
lay many corpses of those who had been bayoneted by Hancock's 
men when they first leaped the entrenchments. To these 
were constantly added the bravest of those who, in the assaults 
to recapture the position, fell at the margin of the works till 
the ground was literally covered with piles of dead and the 
woods in front of the salient were one hideous Golgotha. 

Gen. Grant had sent eight brigades to the Angle at 
8 A.M. The men stood in the narrow area from 20 to 
40 deep, and the rear hues passed their guns rapidly 
to those in front. So tremendous was the fire that 
the entire forest was killed. An oak tree 22 inches in 



74 THE SOUL OF LEE 

diameter was cut down by musketry fire. Its trunk 
is still preserved in Washington. The bodies of the 
wounded and slain fallen in the earlier attacks were 
shot to pieces. So ended the bloody series of en- 
counters at and around Spottsylvania Court House. 
And now again on May 20th Grant resolves on a 
flank movement; but Lee discovers it, and when the 
Union commander reaches his objective near Han- 
over Junction on the 23d he finds it occupied by Lee 
in a position of great strength. Says the historian 
of the Army of the Potomac, "The game of war 
seldom presents a more effectual checkmate than 
was here given by Lee." 

Passing over other flank movements of Gen. 
Grant — always met and foiled by Lee, often because 
he divined rather than discovered them — we come 
to the bloodiest battle of the whole campaign, that of 
Cold Harbor. The strength of the two armies was 
now as follows, each having been reinforced: Lee, 
45,000 men; Grant (with Butler), 112,000. We 
shall not describe the battle that ensued. Suffice 
it to say that a simultaneous assault was made on the 
Confederate lines by the Union Army — and every- 
where with the same result. "Rank after rank was 
swept away imtil the column of assault was almost 
annihilated." 

One Confederate commander. General Hoke, re- 
ported that the ground of his entire front was Hter- 
ally covered with the dead and wounded, and that, 
up to that time, he had not had a single man killed. 
Grant's columns were composed of brave men, but 



LEE AS A MASTER OF DEFENSIVE STRATEGY 75 

when he ordered the assault renewed they sullenly- 
refused to advance. *'No man stirred," says Swm- 
ton, "and the immobile lines pronounced a verdict, 
silent, yet emphatic against further slaughter." No 
wonder, for in one hour on that disastrous 3d of June, 
13,000 Union soldiers had fallen before the deadly 
Confederate fire.* 

Major Steele in his American Campaigns, vol. I, 
p. 504, justly remarks, "If the student looks for any- 
thing brilliant of strategy or tactics, in Gen. Grant's 
operations in this campaign, he will look in vain. 
Lee anticipated every movement the Union Army 
made and took prompt steps to meet it." 

Of his great antagonist he says, "This was the 
first campaign in which Lee was reduced to a strictly 
strategic defensive. After the battle of the Wilder- 
ness he never felt strong enough to assume the 
strategic offensive. Tactically, however, parts of 
his army acted on the offensive in every battle up to 
and including Cold Harbor; and as will be seen in 
the next lecture, almost up to the day of his sur- 
render at Appomattox. "^ — {Id. p. 500). 

Thus ended this extraordinary campaign covering a 
period of one month, in wliich time Lee's incompara- 
ble army had put Jiors de combat of the army under 
Grant a number of men almost equal to its own 
entire strength when the campaign began on the 
4th of May. The Union losses aggregated 60,000; 

* This is Swinton's estimate. Gen. Alexander puts the loss 
at 7,000. 



76 THE SOUL OF LEE 

Lee's loss was about 20,000. No wonder that there 
is a general chorus of admiration among military 
critics for Lee's achievements in these operations. 
We have space for but one quotation : 

''Lee," says Capt. Cecil Battine, "had emerged 
triumphant from a campaign which is surpassed 
by no other in gallant fighting and skilful direction. 
Even the glories of the campaigns of France in 18 14, 
and Frederick's wonderful defiance of his enemies in 
the Seven Years' War, pale before Lee's astonishing 
performance ; for neither Napoleon till he met Welling- 
ton, nor Frederick at any time, was opposed to such a 
dangerous enemy as Grant."* 

It should be noted that the Confederates were 
nearer success at this juncture than at any time 
during the war. "So gloomy was the outlook, 
after the action on the Chickahominy," says S win- 
ton, "and to such a degree, by consequence, had the 
public mind become relaxed, that there was at this 
time great danger of a collapse of the war." — (p. 494). f 

"Grant's campaign," says Steele, "as far south- 
ward as the Chickahominy had been one of tactical 
defeats, with heavy losses, which carried sorrow home 
to every part of the land; the last battle, Cold 
Harbor, was the costliest repulse the Union Army 
had suffered; the morale of Lee's Army was as good 



* The Crisis of the Confederacy, p. 382. 

t There is a story resting on excellent authority which, if 
made public, will remarkably confirm Mr. Swinton's statement 
above. 



LEE AS A MASTER OF DEFENSIVE STRATEGY 77 

as ever." Why then did the government at Wash- 
ington persevere with the war? The answer does 
not admit of doubt. The success of Farragut in 
Mobile Bay; Hood's defeat by Sherman before 
Atlanta in August; and Sheridan's victories in the 
Shenandoah in September;— these were the events 
which neutralized Lee's success in the campaign of 
1864. It may therefore be said with much truth that 
the war was won for the South in the East, but lost 
in the Southwest. 



VI 
THE SIEGE OF PETERSBURG 



"/w the case of Lee we admire much that was Napo- 
leonic in the conception of his plans. ^^ — Count Yorck 
von Wartenhurg. 

"The greatest general of the day.'' — Col. Livermore. 

"Lee stands out as one of the greatest soldiers of all 
time." — Col. Henderson. 

"As Hannibal, notwithstanding Zama, towers over 
the very inferior Scipio, the figure of Lee eclipses Grant." 
— Colonel Chesney. 



VI 
THE SIEGE OF PETERSBURG 

The crossing of the James River by Gen. Grant 
after the close of the Wilderness campaign, and the 
transfer of his whole army to the front of Petersburg, 
June 15-17, 1864, was a remarkable performance, — a 
bold and successful piece of strategy. On this one 
occasion he certainly outmanoeuvred Lee, who, for 
three days, refused to believe that the thing had been 
done. 

Alexander, the chief of artillery of Longstreet's 
corps, is of opinion that had Lee discovered the move- 
ment of Grant, and sent Longstreet to man the en- 
trenchments at Petersburg, "it is not too much to 
claim that Grant's defeat would have been not less 
bloody and disastrous than was the one at Cold 
Harbor." " Grant here escaped a second defeat more 
bloody and more overwhelming than any preceding. 
Thus the last, and perhaps the best, chances of Con- 
federate success were not lost in the repulse at 
Gettysburg, nor in any combat of arms. They were 
lost in three days lying in camp, believing that Grant 
was hemmed in by the broad part of the James below 
City Point and had nowhere to go but to come and 
attack us."* 

* Military Memoirs, p. 547. 
81 



82 THE SOUL OF LEE 

Major Steele is of opinion that this movement of 
Grant's must be reckoned, "in conception and exe- 
cution, among the very finest achievements of strategy 
to be found in our military history."* 

Now begins the long siege of Petersburg. It 
lasted nine months, from June 15, 1864, to April i, 
1865. The one advantage which Lee had was 
that he operated on interior lines, but in everything 
else, except miHtary genius, he was at a great dis- 
advantage, yet in spite of his inferior numbers he met 
successfully every movement of his powerful and 
resourceful antagonist, on his right or left flank or 
his center, to the very last. 

The story of this siege cannot be told in these 
pages. All through the Wilderness campaign both 
armies protected themselves by breastworks. But 
now a new phase of warfare was developed, which 
may be considered the germ of the vast trench system 
employed at the present time by the armies in Europe. 
Grant caused high, bastioned works to be erected, and 
these made the Union Unes so formidable that they 
were practically unassailable, and enabled the com- 
mander to hold them safely with a small force, while 
throwing the bulk of his army on some chosen point 
of attack in Lee's line. 

A word may be said of the mine driven under the 
Confederate works and exploded on the morning of 
July 30th. A main gallery had been constructed 
510 feet long, with lateral galleries in which eight 

* Military Memoirs, p. 529. 



LEE IN THE SIEGE OF PETERSBURG 83 

magazines were placed, containing a charge of 8000 
pounds of powder. It was cleverly planned and 
skilfully and scientifically executed by the Federal 
engineers. 

The explosion was to be the signal for a grand 
assault along the whole line by infantry and cavalry 
also. A little before 5 a.m. the fuse was lighted. 
"Then the earth trembled and heaved, and cannon, 
caissons, sandbags and men went up into the air with 
the tremendous explosion, leaving an enormous hole 
in the ground, 175 feet long, 60 feet wide, 30 feet 
deep, filled with dust, great blocks of clay, guns, 
broken gun carriages, projecting timbers, and men 
buried up to their necks, others to their waists, and 
some with only their feet and legs protruding from the 
earth." 

But great as was the success of the mine, the Con- 
federates quickly rallied under the eye of Lee himself 
and the "Battle of the Crater" which ensued resulted 
in a brilliant success for the Southern Army. The 
Crater was crowded with Union troops who in the 
end raised the wliite flag and surrendered. Gen. 
Grant says it promised to be the most successful 
assault of the campaign, but terminated in disaster, 
though 50,000 troops stood ready to support it. Of 
this siege Col. Archer Anderson says, "The Confed- 
erate commander displayed every art by which genius 
and courage can make good the lack of numbers and 
resources. But the increasing misfortunes of the 
Confederate arms in other theatres of war gradually 
cut off the supply of men and means. The Army of 



84 THE SOUL OF LEE 

Northern Virginia ceased to be recruited, it ceased 
to be adequately fed. It lived for months on less 
than one- third rations. It was demoralized not by 
the enemy in its front, but by the enemy in Georgia 
and the Carolinas. It dwindled to 35,000 men 
holding a front of 35 miles; but over the enemy it 
still cast the shadow of its great name." Gen. Grant 
continued to press the siege with great energy and 
with dogged perseverance. He could afford to per- 
severe when he saw the army of Lee growing weaker 
with every conflict, and its suppKes steadily ex- 
hausted. The opinion of an accomphshed officer of 
the United States may here be quoted: 

"In the long siege of Petersburg, Lee had the ad- 
vantage of interior lines of operation and of a better 
knowledge of the intricate wooded country and cross 
roads. He made such good use of his advantages as 
to meet every movement of his enemy to right or 
left, up to the very last, with a force large enough 
to stop him. Not until Lee's line of works had 
stretched to more than 35 miles, with only about 1000 
men to the mile to hold it, and Sheridan's larger force 
of cavalry was threatening his only Hne of supply 
and retreat, was Lee driven back from his outer Une 
of entrenchments and forced to flee with his army."* 

The same authority bears the following testimony 
as to the Army of Northern Virginia at the end of the 
Wilderness campaign: "The morale of Lee's Army 
was as good as ever." 

* American Campaigns, Major M. F. Steele, 1909. 



LEE IN THE SIEGE OF PETERSBURG 85 

Lee on his part bravely and skilfully met and often 
foiled his powerful antagonist. Gen. A. P. Hill 
severely defeated Gen. Hancock when the latter 
attempted to seize the Weldon railroad, capturing 
colors and guns and over 3000 stands of small arms 
besides 2150 prisoners. His loss was about 700 
men, Hancock's 2370. But such successes made no 
change in Grant's tactics. He kept up the hammer- 
ing process, now at one point, now at another. 

Having failed in his attacks so far on the South 
side of the James, he now assaulted Lee's lines on the 
Richmond side of the river, and though successful 
at Fort Harrison, he met a bloody repulse at Fort 
Gilmer. 

For eight months after the battle of the Crater 
the heroic Confederate chieftain held his lines before 
Petersburg, but as winter drew on his difficulties 
became more and more overwhelming. He saw 
his brave veterans suffering in the trenches from cold 
and hunger and insufficient food and clothing, and 
do what he would he could not relieve them. "In 
some regiments," he wrote Mrs. Lee, "only 50 men 
have shoes, and bacon is issued only once in a few 
days." In visiting the lines late in the evening he 
found a sentry on duty without any trousers. When 
questioned he said he only had one pair and they 
were much worn, so he kept them to wear in the day- 
time. It was about that time that he advocated 
enlisting negro troops. 

What a tragic spectacle it is — the struggle of 
that heroic soul against the fate that was relentlessly 



86 THE SOUL OF LEE 

closing in upon him ! The dark shadows of impending 
disaster were falling across his pathway as the New 
Year of 1865 dawned on the South. January 15th 
Fort Fisher falls — and the ports of the Confederacy 
are hermetically sealed! Then come the tidings 
that Sherman has reached Savannah! By March 23d 
he is at Goldsboro, N. C, only 150 miles from 
Petersburg. 

But Lee and his heroic little army have no thought 
but to stand firmly in their lines, grimly resisting 
to the last. On the 9th of February he had been 
made Commander-in-chief of the Confederate Armies 
—an empty honor at that desperate stage of the great 
game of war ! However, he at once issued a general 
order exhorting the soldiers of the South to renewed 
devotion and sacrifice, saying: 

"Let us oppose constancy to adversity, fortitude 
to suffering, and courage to danger, with the firm 
assurance that Fie who gave freedom to our fathers 
will bless the efforts of their children to preserve it." 

Other efforts too he made. We find him appealing 
to the farmers to send in supplies for provisioning the 
army in its great straits. Later he issued a circular 
to the citizens asking them to contribute saddles, 
revolvers, pistols, carbines for the cavalry. To Mrs. 
Lee about this time he writes: 

"I pray we may not be overwhelmed. I shall, 
however, endeavor to do my duty and fight to the 
last." 

One more heroic effort Lee resolved upon, the assault 
on Fort Stedman, which, had it succeeded, would 



LEE IN THE SIEGE OF PETERSBURG 87 

have broken the center of Grant's Army. It met 
with initial success under Gordon's splendid leader- 
ship, and might have accomplished its object had 
the supporting column been in time, but it was not, 
and the daring enterprise ended in failure and severe 
loss. 

Even on the eve of the evacuation of Petersburg, 
on March 31st, Lee essayed a daring offensive — 
making a swift attack with about 17,000 men upon 
Grant's exposed flank while marching through a 
swampy forest. 

Once more Lee's resourceful genius flared forth in 
his dispositions for the battle of Five Forks, on April 
ist, where a great success should have been achieved 
but for Major-Gen. Pickett's absence from the field 
of battle till the day was lost. That officer was soon 
after reheved from duty with the Army of Northern 
Virginia. We shall have more to say of Five Forks 
in our next chapter, and also of the tragic retreat, 
begun April 2d, and ending with Appomattox April 9th. 

We may here say a few words of Lee's place as a 
strategist and as a commander among the great sol- 
diers of history. At the outset one tiling is clear, — 
his fame has been waxing greater and greater during 
the last half century. General Grant's estimate of 
him as "a fair commander," ''of a slow, cautious 
nature without imagination or humor," finds no echo 
among miHtary experts in Europe or America today. 
That General further said, "I never could see in his 
achievements what justified his reputation. The 



88 THE SOUL OF LEE 

illusion that heavy odds beat him will not stand the 
ultimate light of history. I know it is not true. Lee 
was a good deal of a headquarters general . . . almost 
too old for active service."* 

What Gen. Grant could not see (if Young has cor- 
rectly reported him) is plain to the eyes of the great 
body of military men today whose judgment would 
really count. For instance, Major-Gen. Sir Fred- 
erick B. Maurice, chief director of miHtary operations 
at the War Office of the British Army, has recently 
told us that the commanders of the great armies 
now at deadly grip in Europe are following the same 
strategical principles laid down by Napoleon and Lee. 

Count Yorck von Wartenburg in his brilliant work 
on the Campaigns of Napoleon (published in 1902) 
says, "In the case of Lee we admire much that was 
Napoleonic in the conception of his plans." Col. 
Chas. CornwaUis Chesney of the British Army says, 
"Like Napoleon, Lee's troops soon learned to believe 
him equal to every emergency that war could bring." 

Capt. Cecil Battine, of the King's Hussars, in his 
brilUant work The Crisis of the Confederacy says, 
"The mighty campaign of 1864 before Richmond 
was as much a masterpiece of defensive warfare as 
Napoleon's campaign of 1814" (p. 307). And again 
he writes, referring to the final action of June 17th 
and 18th before Petersburg, "Lee had emerged tri- 
umphant from a campaign which is surpassed by no 

*Mr. Gamaliel Bradford tells us that Grant never said 
anything in commendation of Lee's military ability. 



LEE IN THE SIEGE OF PETERSBURG 89 

other in gallant fighting and skilful direction. Even 
the glories of the Campaign of France, in 1814, 
and Frederick's wonderful defiance of his enemies in 
the Seven Years' War, pale before Lee's astonishing 
performance; for neither Napoleon till he met Wel- 
lington, nor Frederick at any time, was opposed to 
such a dangerous enemy as Grant." — {Id., p. 380). 

And yet again, " In the boldness and sagacity of 
his strategy, he resembled Napoleon himself." — 
{Id., p. 114). 

Col. Henderson also, the accomplished author of the 
Life of Stonewall Jackson, commenting on the cam- 
paign against Pope says, "Lee stands out as one of 
the greatest soldiers of all times." — II, 231. 

And again he gives it as his opinion that '' Lee was 
undoubtedly one of the greatest, if not the greatest, 
soldier who ever spoke the English tongue." — {Science 
of War, p. 314). 

Lord Wolseley's opinion of Lee as "the ablest 
general he had ever met," is well known,— and 
he had met von Moltke, who by the way held Lee the 
equal of WelHngton. 

It has been remarked that the most recent foreign 
critics, while recognizing the mistakes which Lee 
undoubtedly made — and, as a distinguished general 
once remarked, the commander "who has never made 
mistakes has never made war" — yet unite in the 
highest praise of his military genius. 

Let it also be said that not the least enthusiastic 
praise of Lee's strategy has fallen from the hps or the 
pens of Northern military writers. For example, Col. 



90 THE SOUL OF LEE 

W. R. Livermore is of opinion that "if Grant in the 
spring of 1864 had come to the Army of North- 
ern Virginia and Lee to the Army of the Potomac, 
it is not impossible that the war would have ended 
then and there," and that " this campaign alone 
would entitle him to the high place he justly holds 
among the great commanders of the world." Again 
he calls him "the greatest general of the day." 

Other Union ofl&cers might be quoted who express 
the highest admiration for Lee's genius in war, — but 
the most remarkable is that of Col. Eben Swift, of 
the General Staff of the United States, in a paper 
read before the American Historical Society in 19 10, 
who writes, "The odds of numbers were greater 
against Lee in the Wilderness campaign than against 
Napoleon in the Waterloo campaign. But Lee had 
his army at the end and Napoleon's disaster was 
complete. In the Wilderness campaign Lee in- 
flicted losses in killed and wounded almost as great 
as the army he commanded. Lee made five cam- 
paigns in a single year; no other man and no other 
army ever did as much. . . . Lee practiced his own 
theory of the art of war. Although indebted to 
Napoleon, he treated each problem as a concrete 
case, which he solved according to circumstances, 
and he had his greatest success when he departed 
furthest from established rules. . . . But Lee's art 
seems to have died with him. Up to the present he 
has taught no pupil and he has inspired no successor."* 

* Quoted by Gamaliel Bradford, Lee, the American, p. 189. 



LEE IN THE SIEGE OF PETERSBURG 91 

With these estimates of Lee still echoing in our ears 
how pitiful is the carping criticism of Gen. Badeau 
that Gen. Lee was after all only "a, second-rate com- 
mander," and the jaundiced view of Longstreet, 
smarting under the well-deserved condemnation of 
the Southern soldiers after the war: "In the art of 
war I do not think Gen. Lee was a master." 

Two circumstances ought always be in mind in 
considering Lee's achievements and his failures. 
The first is that he was hampered up to February, 
1865, by the fact that he was not in supreme command. 
Viscount Lord Wolseley remarks that for that 
reason we can never take the full measure of Lee's 
military genius. Before he could put his plans into 
operation, he must always get the approval of the 
Richmond authorities. And political considerations 
sometimes decided the strategy of a campaign, 
instead of purely military ones. Richmond and 
Petersburg would have been abandoned months 
before they were, had sound military strategy deter- 
mined Lee's policy. 

And another thing of great moment in considering 
Lee's success or failure in his campaigns was the 
enemy in his rear, — the incompetence which kept 
his army half shod, half fed and half clothed — this 
in the first years of the war, and then the failure of 
resources and of food and of munitions, as the coils of 
the blockade were drawn tighter and tighter almost 
to strangulation. He fought Gen. Grant in front and 
General Want and General Desertion in his rear. 



VII 
THE SOUL OF LEE IN DISASTER 



^^ Human virtue should he equal to human calamity. ^^ 

— Robert E. Lee. 

^'The good Father has laid it on men to offer their life 
jor an ideal. If we fought from blood lust, or hate, 
war would be sordid; but if we fight as only a Christian 
may, that friendship and peace with our foes may 
become possible, then fighting is our duty, and our fasting 
and dirt, our wounds and our death, are our beauty and 
God's glory." — A Student in Arms. 

"In strategy mighty, in battle terrible, in adversity 
as in prosperity a hero indeed, with the simple devotion 
to duty and the rare purity of the ideal Christian knight, 
he joined all the kingly qualities of a leader of men.'" 
— Col. Chas. Cornwallis Chesney. 



VII 
THE SOUL OF LEE IN DISASTER 

The third day of battle at Gettysburg gives the 
first opportunity for studying the soul of Lee in 
disaster. The great charge had been made with 
magnificent valor, but it had failed, and the shat- 
tered remnants of that heroic column of 12,000 men 
were streaming back in disorder. Col. Freeman tie 
of the British Army, an eyewitness, has described 
Lee's demeanor on the occasion — how serenely he 
faced the crushing defeat — how he met the retreating 
men, one by one, with words of sympathy and encour- 
agement, — bidding them rally to the colors, — "all 
this will come right in the end; we'll talk of it after- 
wards; but in the meantime all good men must 
rail)'." No word of reproach for the ofiicer respon- 
sible for the disaster; no self-exculpation, but a 
magnanimous acceptance of the whole responsibility. 
"All this has been my fault. It is I that have lost 
this fight, and you must help me out of it the best 
way you can." 

No one knew better than Lee at that moment that 
his failure to win a decisive victory that day meant 
the failure of the campaign and the loss of a decisive 
opportunity; but, with superb magnanimity, he 
refrained from putting the blame of defeat where it 
belonged, and took it all on his own shoulders. 

95 



96 THE SOUL OF LEE 

For the supreme example of how the soul of Lee 
met disaster, we must study certain crises in that last 
campaign against Grant, beginning the 4th of May, 
1864, and ending at Appomattox April 9, 1865, — a 
continuous battle of eleven months' duration against 
General Grant's immense army, and against cold and 
hunger and every conceivable discouragement. 

The long, desperate struggle of the army of Lee 
against inevitable defeat was drawing to a close. Its 
matchless valor could not much longer delay the 
end. Forces beyond Lee's control were working in- 
exorably to destroy the strength of his army and 
paralyze his unexcelled military genius. The blockade 
of the Southern ports had been slowly but steadily 
strangUng the South. "As a student of war," wrote 
Viscount Lord Wolseley to the present writer No- 
vember 12, 1904, "I am of the opinion that it 
was the blockade of your ports that killed the 
Southern Confederacy; not the action of the Northern 
Armies." 

Supremacy on the sea was the decisive factor in the 
conflict. While Lee was winning victories in the field, 
or successfully holding back the flood of invasion, 
the Navy of the Union was steadily cutting off the 
supplies necessary for the life of the Confederacy and 
its armies. New Orleans was taken; Vicksburg fell; 
the Mississippi was opened through its whole length; 
Grant's base on the James River was made secure 
by the gunboats. Sherman could march safely to 
the sea, because secure there of a new base of opera- 
tions. Tighter and tighter the strangling cord was 



THE SOUL OF LEE IN DISASTER 97 

drawn at all the ports by which supphes could be 
expected from abroad. 

Before the year 1863 closed Lee warned the Rich- 
mond Government that supplies by vessels running 
the blockade had become so precarious that they could 
not longer be relied upon for the support of the Army. 
Already he writes, "Thousands (of the men) are bare- 
footed, a greater number partially shod, and nearly 
all without overcoats, blankets or warm clothing." 
But matters grew worse as the months of 1864 rolled 
round. The winter came. Then in January, 1865, 
Fort Fisher fell. This closed the last channel of 
supply from Europe, and all knew that the hope of 
foreign intervention had faded away. Meanwhile 
the railways were breaking down. Engines and 
rolling stock were failing. The rails were almost 
worn out. Grimly and resolutely Lee's Httle army 
held its ground in the trenches before Petersburg 
and Richmond — 33,000 muskets on a Hne of about 
thirty- three miles! — but exhaustion and starvation 
stared them in the face. Lee describes the situation 
in words that have been often quoted: "Yesterday 
(February 7, 1865) the most inclement day of the 
winter" the right wing of the army "had to be re- 
tained in line of battle" under fire of the enemy; 
"some of them had been without meat for three 
days, and all were suffering from reduced rations and 
scant clothing, exposed to battle, cold, hail and sleet." 
No wonder that he adds, "The physical strength of 
the men, if their courage survives, must fail under 
this treatment." 



98 THE SOUL OF LEE 

No one who studies the documents, or attentively 
considers the situation can doubt that Lee, at this 
time, saw the inevitable end. His army was melting 
away. Desertions were taking place at the rate of 
loo per day — and no wonder— for hundreds of letters 
were coming to the soldiers from the people at home, 
''in which mothers, wives and sisters told of their 
inabiHty to respond to the appeals of hungry children 
for bread, or to provide proper care and medicine 
for the sick; and, in the name of all that was dear, 
appealed to the men to come home and rescue them 
from the ills which they suffered and the starvation 
which threatened them." 

Thus clouds big with disaster were gathering round 
Lee and his heroic little army. Through all he 
remained calm and serene, meeting adversity with 
courage unshaken, never losing his poise, never 
allowing even those closest to him to see in his bearing 
any sign that he had given up hope, never complain- 
ing, as he might well have done, that the mihtary 
necessities of the situation had been subordinated to 
poHtical considerations. 

Months before Lee had seen that Richmond and 
Petersburg should be abandoned. As early as Feb- 
ruary 2 2d he had suggested it to the Secretary of 
War.* Their retention was not essential to success — 
on the contrary the determination to hold them 
could not but be fatal in the end. So small an army 
as his could not successfully withstand a siege by 

* Capt. R. E. Lee's Recollections, pp. 145-6. 



THE SOUL OF LEE IN DISASTER 99 

an adversary so overwhelmingly his superior in 
numbers, equipment, supplies and all the materials 
of war. As a strategist, he saw already that the only 
hope for the Confederacy lay in a rapid movement 
to the South with the greater part of the army, 
before it wasted away in the unequal conflict with 
Gen. Grant and "General Desertion," — to form a 
junction with the army of Joseph E. Johnston, and 
then to turn and destroy the army of Sherman. 
This done he could move back northward and meet 
Grant with some hope of success. 

But this plan did not commend itself to the au- 
thorities at Richmond; and Lee, though now at last, 
since February 5th, Commander-in-Chief of the 
armies in the field, and supreme in the confidence and 
affection of the whole South, so that he could have 
compelled the acceptance of his views, held himself 
subordinate to the civil authorities, and hence against 
his better judgment he kept up the defense of Rich- 
mond and Petersburg until, when at last obhged 
to abandon it, it was too late to attempt the plan of 
uniting his army with that of Gen. Johnston. His 
transportation had so completely broken down that 
the rapid movement of his army southward was 
impossible. 

Yet no word of complaint fell from his lips. Neither 
then nor afterward did he attempt to reheve himself 
of responsibiUty, and place it where it really belonged, 
on other shoulders than his. 

By April ist, the Confederate line had become so 
attenuated that "at some places it consisted of but 



100 THE SOUL OF LEE 

one man to every seven yards." But Lee dared to 
weaken it still further, in order to meet Sheridan at 
Five Forks with all the strength he could muster. 
And so skilful was his strategy that we can see now 
that a decisive victory should have been Lee's at 
Five Forks, but for inexcusable failure to obey his 
orders. 

But again the culpable carelessness of his subor- 
dinates deprived Lee of the fruits of his strategy. 

We may here transcribe the words of a gallant 
commander who took a prominent part in that battle, 
Gen. Thos. T. Munford: "Historians who have not 
made a full study of the records and who have failed 
to secure authentic information from participants 
in the Civil War possessing first-hand knowledge, 
have been incHned to credit Grant with superior 
strategy at the battle of Five Forks, and have failed 
to reahze that this battle was the Waterloo of the 
Confederacy. It was my privilege to have an inti- 
mate part in this crucial battle, and I desire to place 
on record my personal observation of the engagement 
and my professional study of the strategy of the 
battle, with the conclusion that Gen. Lee planned 
this battle with a master mind, and that his superi- 
ority was never more clearly demonstrated than in 
his plans for the battle of Five Forks. If the plans 
of Gen. Lee had been properly and promptly executed, 
the battle would have resulted in a signal success for 
the Army of Northern Virginia and would have 
affected profoundly the duration of the war. This 
conclusion is borne out by the opinion of Federal 



THE SOUL OF LEE IN DISASTER 101 

officers." Gen. Munford then referred to letters in 
support of his conclusion from Jefferson Davis, Gen. 
Wade Hampton, Gen. G. W. Custis Lee, Longstreet 
and others. He refers also to the report of the trial 
of Gen. Warren, Commander of the Fifth Corps of 
the Army of the Potomac. 

There seems no doubt that the officer in command 
of the Confederate forces at Five Forks was not 
present till the day was lost, and no doubt that he 
was relieved of his command after the battle. Nor 
is there any doubt that Gen. R. H. Anderson, placed 
by Gen. Lee on that officer's extreme right, to coop- 
erate at the proper time, was never summoned till the 
battle was lost, and that Sheridan testified that had 
Anderson with his four brigades moved down on his 
rear, instead of his taking Pickett's men he (Sheridan) 
would have been taken prisoner. 

Thus it came about that the battle there resulted 
in a very serious defeat. 

The account of Gen. Munford is confirmed and the 
crucial fact of the battle is explained by the testi- 
mony of a Federal officer, Gen. Morris Schaff: 
"Pickett's and Fitz Lee's failure to hold that position 
was fatal, and offered a singular instance of Fortune's 
bad turn of her wheel for Lee; inasmuch as, when 
Sheridan made his attack, the famous long-haired 
Pickett, Gettysburg's hero, and the cavalry com- 
manders, blue and gay-eyed Fitz Lee, and gigantic, 
high-shouldered and black-eyed Rosser, were en- 
gaged in planking shad on the north bank of Hatcher's 
Run, two miles or more in the rear of their resolute 



102 THE SOUL OF LEE 

but greatly outnumbered troops. Although the fire 
was quick and heavy, it was completely smothered by 
the intervening timber, and notwithstanding the 
heroic efforts of the gallant Munford and the infantry 
brigade commanders, before Fitz Lee, Pickett and 
Rosser got to the front, the day was lost; so at least 
the story was told to me by my friend Rosser."* 

This author states that Lee started several bri- 
gades under Anderson to Pickett's help, "but before 
Anderson could reach Pickett, Sheridan, reinforced 
by Warren, assailed him and drove him with great 
confusion from the field." This statement conflicts 
with the testimony of Gen. Munford just quoted, 
who states that Anderson was on the field but re- 
ceived no orders from Gen. Pickett — naturally, as 
the latter was two miles away. 

Two other Federal officers have written accounts of 
the battle of Five Forks, Major Caswell McClellan 
and Major General Joshua L. Chamberlin. Their 
statements give additional confirmation of the accu- 
racy of Gen. Munford's view of the battle. 

Thus Gen. Chamberlin writes: "Wise's, Gracie's 
and Hunton's brigades had been ordered out of the 
Claiborne entrenchments that afternoon to attack 
the right flank of the Fifth Corps; but being obliged 
to take a roundabout way, and getting entangled 
among the streams and marshes north of the White 
Oak Road they were too late to reach the scene of 
action until all was over." And again, "Wha if 

* The Sunset oj the Confederacy, pp. ig-20. 



THE SOUL OF LEE IN DISASTER 103 

those three Confederate brigades ordered out of the 
Claiborne entrenchments that afternoon to fall on 
the flank of the Fifth Corps attacking at Five Forks, 
had come straight down, and not gone a long round- 
about way as they did, striking too late and too far 
off for any good or harm, — what would have been 
the effect in such case." * 

Again he writes: "Would it not have been awk- 
ward to have these 5000 fresh men come down on the 
backs of our infantry, while having its hands full in 
front? What could MacKenzie have done with 
these men and Fitzhugh Lee's cavalry together? 
Lucky was it for us in either case that these 5000 
infantrjrmen did not get down there." f 

"It is a very remarkable circumstance that neither 
of the three chief Confederate commanders was 
actually present on the field during the progress of 
the battle. They had been on the ground earUer, it 
seems, on retiring from Dinwiddie ; but for one reason 
or another they had one by one retired across Hatch- 
er's Rim — looking after their 'communications' very 
likely. J Pickett returned to the field only after we 
had all gained the Ford Road at about 6 p.m. but 
Fitzhugh Lee and Rosser not at all. Pickett nar- 
rowly escaped the shots of our men as he attempted 



* The Passing of the Armies, pp. 127, 172. 

\Id., p. 173. 

J Private correspondence of Confederate officers present 
gives some curious details as to a shad dinner on the north 
side of Hatcher's Run. 



104 THE SOUL OF LEE 

to pass them to reach his broken lines toward the 
White Oak Road. 

"It is also remarkable that Gen. Robert E. Lee, 
although himself alert, was not kept informed by 
Fitzhugh Lee or Pickett of the movements of the 
Fifth Corps in relation to Five Forks, and that Lee 
was led by a word from Pickett to suppose that Fitz- 
hugh Lee's and Rosser's cavalry were both close in 
support of Pickett's left flank at Five Forks. This 
was not the truth. Fitzhugh Lee's cavalry under 
Munford was over a thousand yards east of Pickett's 
left at the beginning and during the day was pressed 
around to the rear so as to reach his troops after 
their lines had all been broken ; and as for Rosser's 
cavalry, they were at no time in the field. We know 
now that Gen. Robert E. Lee afterwards wrote 
Gen. Wade Hampton in these words: 'Had you been 
at Five Forks with your cavalry the disaster would 
not have befallen my army.' Nor does it appear that 
Gen. Anderson, commanding Gen. Lee's reserves in 
this quarter, knew anything of the pressing need of 
them at Five Forks until it was all over."* 

Once more he writes: "Our isolated position there 
invited fresh attack; and we only escaped it by the 
blundering or over-cautious course of the forces sent 
out by Lee from the Claiborne front that after- 
noon." t 

Major Caswell McClellan in his book Grant versus 

* The Passing of the Armies, p. 173. 
t id., p. 175. 



THE SOUL OF LEE IN DISASTER 105 

the Record gives a similar account of the facts above 
referred to.* 

This blow at Five Forks was fatal. It became im- 
perative that Petersburg should be evacuated without 
delay, and on the 2d of April the retreat of Lee's army- 
began. Several days more and the end came at 
Appomattox. We may here transcribe the words of 
that gallant and generous Union soldier, Gen. Charles 
Francis Adams: 

"Finally, when in April the summons to conflict 
came, the Army of Northern Virginia, the single 
remaining considerable organized force of the Con- 
federacy, seemed to stagger to its feet, and, gaunt and 
grim, shivering with cold, and emaciated with hunger, 
worn down by hard, unceasing attrition, it faced its 
enemy, formidable still." 

What a tragedy was that retreat from Petersburg! 
The army of Lee, outnumbered more than three to 
one by the army of Gen. Grant: the latter "armed, 
clothed, equipped, fed and sheltered as no similar 
force in the world's history had ever been before," 
the former almost starved, having been long on 
greatly reduced rations, scantily clothed, in large 
part without shoes, its vitality lowered by exposure 
to cold and hail and sleet, and by overwork in the 
trenches; the horses, too, like the men, half starved. 

Nor is all this the uttermost of the disparity be- 
tween the two armies. It is a fact established upon 
the verbal and written testimony of Major-Gen. 

*See Note at end of Chapter (p. 112). 



106 THE SOUL OF LEE 

G. W. Custis Lee, that Gen. Lee had sent to the 
authorities in Richmond a confidential statement 
indicating the lines by which he would \vithdraw his 
army and the points where he wished supplies to be 
accumulated; and that this document, found by 
Gen. Weitzel in the office of Mr. Jefi"erson Davis, 
shortly after the fall of Richmond, was sent post-haste 
to Gen. Grant. Thus the Union commander, within 
twenty-four hours after Lee began his retreat, was 
put in possession of that officer's whole plan of opera- 
tions. No wonder the Union General Benham ex- 
claimed to a Confederate officer, captured at Sailors 
Creek, "Oh, you could not get away. We knew 
beforehand every move you were going to make." 

This fact disposes of the claim of Mr. Rodes that 
Grant outgeneraled Lee in the retreat to Appo- 
mattox. When the lion is caught in the net, it 
does not require the skill of a mighty hunter to slay 
him! 

It is strange that Mr, Gamaliel Bradford hesitates 
to accept the fact above narrated. He refers to it 
as a "very remarkable anecdote" and admits that 
"the story seems well authenticated," yet con- 
cludes that it is "rather difficult to accept." (See 
his Notes, p. 302.) To our mind it seems difficult 
not to accept. It is told orally, and again in writing, 
by Major- Gen. Custis Lee, a very clear-headed man, 
as an incident in his own experience. At Sailors Creek 
where Gen. Custis Lee was captured with Gen. Ewell 
April 6th, Gen. Benham "began talking to Gen. 
Ewell in a loud tone of voice. . . . *I heard Gen. Ben- 



THE SOUL OF LEE IN DISASTER 107 

ham say . . . that Gen. Weitzel had found, soon after 
his entrance into Richmond, a letter from Gen. Lee 
(etc., quoted above), stating what he proposed to do 
should it become necessary to withdraw from the 
lines before Richmond and Petersburg, and that the 
letter was immediately sent to Gen. Grant. In 
answer to some doubt expressed by Gen. Ewell, or 
someone else, Gen. Benham replied, 'Oh, there is 
no doubt about the letter, for I saw it myself.' " 

This statement from Gen. Custis Lee is to be found 
in the Memoirs of JeJJerson Davis by his wife (1890), 
vol. II, p. 595, and also in a fuller oral form in A 
Soldier'' s Recollections (McKim, 191 1), pp. 265-268. 
Gen. Robert Lee's comments to his son when told of 
this incident confirm the fact that he had written 
such a letter as was alleged to have been found. 

What makes the fact of its being left in the scrap 
basket easy to believe is the fact that Jefferson Davis 
was notoriously careless in the handling of important 
documents. The writer has heard Col. Charles 
Marshall, Lee's military secretary, descant upon this, 
and give instance after instance of the fact.* 

How did Lee bear himself under these disas- 
trous conditions? Let one of his staff, Gen. Long, 
answer : 

"During these trying scenes his countenance wore 
its habitual calm, grave expression. Those who 
watched his face to catch a glimpse of what was 

* See Note on p. 114. 



108 THE SOUL OF LEE 

passing in his mind could gather thence no trace of 
his inner sentiments. Only once during the retreat 
was he perceived to lose the most complete self- 
control. On enquiring at Farmville why a certain 
bridge had not been burned, he spoke of the blunder 
with a warmth and impatience which served to 
show how great a repression he ordinarily exercised 
over his feelings."* 

The same ofi&cer relates that on April 7 th, some of 
Lee's principal officers deputed Gen. Pendleton to 
say that in their opinion further resistance was hope- 
less and that negotiations should be opened for a 
surrender of the army. But even then Lee's heroic 
soul would not yield to the decree of Fate. It 
is of moment here to note that he said to Gen. 
Pendleton : 

"I have never believed we could, against the gigan- 
tic combination for our subjugation, make good in the 
long run our independence unless foreign powers 
should assist us. . . . But such considerations really 
made with me no difference. We had, I was satis- 
fied, sacred principles to maintain and rights to 
defend, for which we were in duty bound to do our 
best, even if we perished in the endeavor." 

And now we see another display of that dauntless 
and unconquerable courage which still flamed up in 
the Soul of Lee: On the 8th of April he resolved to 
cut his way through the host that encircled him. His 
heroic little army, reduced now to 10,000 effectives, 

* Memoirs, p. 413. 



THE SOUL OF LEE IN DISASTER 109 

marched forth at 3 a.m. on the 9th to assail an enemy 
75,000 strong. "But," says Long, "notwithstanding 
the stupendous odds there was not in that little band 
a heart that quailed or a hand that trembled; there 
was not one of them who would not willingly have laid 
down his life in the cause they had so long main- 
tained, and for the noble chief who had so often led 
them to victory." 

But when on the early morning of April 9th the 
little army advanced to make the forlorn attempt, it 
found Grant's multitudes right across its path; the 
enterprise was abandoned; and Lee resolved to sur- 
render the remnant of the Army of Northern Vir- 
ginia. The capture of his letter to Jefferson Davis, 
detailing his plans, had done its fatal work ! 

Gen. Alexander has told us how he earnestly 
remonstrated with Gen. Lee against the surrender of 
the army and counselled a dispersion of the soldiers 
individually to rally subsequently as best they might 
for further resistance; and he has recorded Gen. Lee's 
reply : 

" General, you and I as Christian men have no right 
to consider only how this would affect us. We must 
consider its effect on the country as a whole. Already 
it is demoralized by the four years of war. If I took 
your advice, the men would be without rations and 
under no control of officers. They would be com- 
pelled to rob and steal in order to live. They would 
become mere bands of marauders and the enemy's 
cavalry would pursue them and overrun many wide 
sections. . . . We would bring on a state of 



110 THE SOUL OF LEE 

affairs it would take the country years to recover 
from." * 

These words revealed the greatness of the soul of 
Lee, and they settled the question definitely and 
finally. Alexander says : *' I had not a single word to 
say in reply. He had answered my suggestion from 
a plane so far above it, that I was ashamed of having 
made it." 

It was a great crisis, not for Lee only, as at Arling- 
ton four years before, but for the whole South, yes, 
and for the North too; and he rose to its full height. 
As then he faced the issue alone, so now. He sought 
no counsel. He looked for none to divide the respon- 
sibility with him. He asked no support from his 
generals in deciding the question. And thus Lee 
saved the country. North and South, from the horrors 
of a guerrilla warfare. To have waged such warfare 
would have been the counsel of many of his officers. 
But Lee summoned no Council of War. ''Sitting 
before the bivouac fire," says Charles Francis Adams, 
"at Appomattox he reviewed the situation. Doing 
so, as before at Arhngton, he reached his own con- 
clusion. That conclusion he himself at the time ex- 
pressed in words, brief indeed, but vibratory with 
moral triumph: 'The question is, is it right to 
surrender the army? If it is right, then I will take 
all the responsibility.' " 

And so Lee asked for a conference with Grant; 
the surrender was speedily effected; and the Confed- 

*Alexander, Military Memoirs, p. 600. 



THE SOUL OF LEE IN DISASTER 111 

crate commander returned to his lines. "It is im- 
possible," writes Gen. Long, " to describe the anguish 
of the troops when it was known that the surrender 
of the army was inevitable. . . . The bronzed faces of 
thousands of grim warriors were bathed in tears. 
As he rode slowly along the line, hundreds of his 
devoted veterans pressed around the noble chief, 
trying to take his hand, touch his person, or even lay 
their hands upon his horse. . . . The General then 
with head bare and tears flowing down his manly 
cheeks, bade adieu to the army." With a voice 
quivering with emotion he said : 

"Men, we have fought through the war together; 
I have done my best for you ; my heart is too full to 
say more." 

To the last those heroes of the Army of Northern 
Virginia were unconquered. That very morning 
they had fought with all their old intrepidity and 
resolution. And they would have fought on until 
the last man had fallen, face to foe; but when Lee 
told them to sheathe their swords and stack their 
muskets they obeyed him, though with breaking 
hearts. 

This his last act as Commander of the Confed- 
erate Armies was every way worthy of his heroic 
character. How much easier, as he himself said, to 
have put himself at the head of that indomitable 
remnant of his army and died with them in one last 
desperate charge! "I would rather die a thousand 
deaths," he had exclaimed, when he saw that he must 
surrender his army. But, true to the principles which 



112 THE SOUL OF LEE 

governed his whole career, he thought not of himself, 
but of his people, of his Country — of what it behooved 
him to do for generations yet unborn. And he made 
the supreme and glorious resolve to surrender his 
army. His Hfe to that very hour had been a com- 
mentary upon his own noble utterance, ^^ There is a 
true glory and a true honor, the glory of duty done" 
And now on this day, and till his hfe ended, he gave 
supreme proof of another of his sayings, 'Human 
virtue should he equal to human calamity." 

To his soldiers, those 8000 rnen with muskets in line 
of battle that gth of April, 1865, whom he surrendered 
to Grant's great host, he said in his last General 
Order, dated April loth, — "You will take with you 
the satisfaction that proceeds from the consciousness 
of duty faithfully performed." 

That consciousness the soul of Lee bore deeply 
graven within till he yielded it up to God five years 
later.* 

* The returns from the various commands made that morning 
showed an aggregate of 8000 muskets in line of battle. — Col. 
Walter H. Taylor, p. 151. 

Note to Page 104 

In a letter which appeared in the Philadelphia Weekly Times, 
April 5, 1885, published during the Ufetime of General Pickett, 
who never challenged its accuracy, General Rosser, after 
describing the battle of Five Forks, says: "It seems to have 
been a surprise to General Pickett. One would have sup- 
posed he would have been on the alert in the presence of the 
enemy he had so recently been fighting." 



THE SOUI. OF LEE IN DISASTER 113 

In another letter, which is also public property, addressed 
to Capt. A. S. Parham, 905 Westminster Street, Washington, 
and dated Charlottesville, April 29, 1902, General Rosser 
describes the shad-bake alluded to above and tells of the 
arrival of pickets who reported the advance of the enemy 
"on all the roads I was picketing." He adds that "little 
attention, however, was given to the enemy's advance." 

He, however, says: "Pickett's conduct at Five Forks was 
the cause of Lee's losing all confidence in him and had the 
opportunity been given he would have been court-martialed. 
He failed to guard his left flank and failed to join his com- 
mand when Col. T. T. Munford reported the enemy's advance." 

General Fitz Lee says in his report of the Appomattox 
campaign that "had General Anderson with Wise's, Grade's 
and Hunton's brigades who, leaving their position at Burgess 
Mill, marched by a circuitous route to our rehef, advanced 
up the direct road. White Oak, he would have been on the 
flank and rear of the enemy forming the enemy's right which 
attacked our right at Five Forks and would probably have 
changed the result of the unequal conquest. 

"whilst Anderson was marching the 5th Corps was march- 
ing back and was able to participate in the attack upon our 
lines the next day whilst the services of these three brigades 
by which Anderson was to reinforce us came up too late for 
use and the five with Pickett, by their absence, increased 
the disparity between the contending forces on the next day 
for the lines circumvallating Petersburg." 

This statement throws hght upon the serious apprehension 
expressed by Gen. ChamberHn as to what might have been 
a disastrous result to the Federal forces had these brigades 
come in upon their rear. General Lee himself, in his report 
to Mr. Jefferson Davis, tells us that he had sent Anderson 
to reinforce Pickett; but it appears that General Anderson 
was not notified by General Pickett or by General Fitzhugh 
Lee of the approach of the enemy. General Munford says 
that General Anderson was not informed of the situation or 
summoned to take part in the battle. 



114 THE SOUL OF LEE 

Note to Page 107 

Gen. Custis Lee states that when he told his father what 
Gen. Benham said, he was greatly moved and exclaimed, 
"Well, Custis, that explains it! I could never till now 
understand why I failed to extricate my army. I never 
worked harder than I did then to accompHsh it, yet every 
move I made was at once checkmated." 



VIII 

LEE AND THE ARMY OF NORTHERN 
VIRGINIA 



^^ Like Napoleon, Lee's troops soon learned to believe 
him equal to every emergency that war could bring. . . . 
Like CcBsar he mixed with the crowd of soldiers freely, 
and never feared that his position would be forgotten." — 
Col. Charles Cornwallis Chesney. 

^^He was the head and front, the very life and soul oj 
the Army." — Gen. Jubal A. Early. 

^^ Lee and the Army of Northern Virginia never sus- 
tained defeat." — Charles Francis Adams. 



VIII 

LEE AND THE ARMY OF NORTHERN 
VIRGINIA 

It has been well said of Lee by a distinguished 
member of the United States General Staff: "All 
great soldiers before him inherited a ready-made 
army, but Lee made his own army."* Not only did 
he organize it, and consoUdate it, and fashion it 
into a well-tempered instrument of extraordinary 
efificiency, but he inspired it, in the two years nine 
months and ten days during which he commanded it, 
with his own heroic spirit. The fortitude, the patient 
endurance, the intrepidity, the daring, the steadiness, 
the poise, which he possessed, he imparted to his 
army, by that subtle power which a great personaUty 
is sometimes able to exert over masses of men. 

Perhaps the highest encomiums ever pronounced 
upon the Army of Northern Virginia have come from 
its antagonists, — from those who grappled with it in 
deadly conflict and felt its prowess. Thus Gen. 
Hooker, who commanded the Federal Army at Chan- 
cellorsville, declared in his testimony before the Com- 
mittee on the Conduct of the War, that Lee's army 
showed "a steadiness and efficiency unsurpassed 

* Quoted by Mr. Gamaliel Bradford in Lee the American, 
p. 189. 

117 



118 THE SOUL OF LEE 

in my judgment in ancient or modern times," and 
he added, "We have not been able to rival it." And 
Gen. Chas. A. Whittier of Massachusetts has said, 
"The Army of Northern Virginia will deservedly 
rank as the best army which has existed on this con- 
tinent, suffering privations unknown to its opponent. 
The North sent no such army to the field." 

Swinton, the historian of the Army of the Potomac, 
exclaims : 

Who can ever forget, that once looked upon it, that army 
of tattered uniforms and bright muskets, that body of incom- 
parable infantry, the Army of Northern Virginia, which for 
four years carried the revolt on their bayonets, opposing a 
constant front to the mighty concentration of power brought 
against it; which, receiving terrible blows, did not fail to give 
the like, and which, vital in all its parts, died only with its 
annihilation. 

Theodore Roosevelt gives his opinion in these 
words, "The world has never seen better soldiers 
than those who followed Lee." And Charles Francis 
Adams in his centennial oration deliberately declares : 

"Lee a.nd the Army of Northern Virginia never 
sustained defeat. Finally, it is true, succumbing to 
exhaustion, to the end they were not overthrown in 
fight." 

Lee's own opinion of his army has peculiar interest. 
Its material in his eyes was " the best in the world. . . . 
Nothing can surpass the gallantry and intelhgence 
of the main body." Again he writes to Hood, 
"There never were such men in an army before." 
This confidence and admiration he did not fail to 



LEE AND THE ARMY OF NORTHERN VIRGINIA 119 

express to them publicly, and by doing so bound them 
ever more closely to him: " You have fought a fierce 
and sanguinary battle, which, if not attended with 
the success that has hitherto crowned your efforts, 
was marked by the same heroic spirit which has 
commanded the respect of your enemies, the grati- 
tude of your country and the admiration of mankind." 

At this point we cannot forbear dwelhng on the 
contrast between the Army of Northern Virginia 
and the army that is fighting in Europe today under 
the Prussian Eagles. As we follow the track of the 
latter we see reaHzed the description of the Hebrew 
prophet, "The land is as the garden of Eden before 
them, and behind them a desolate wilderness." 
What an appalling spectacle it is! Towns and vil- 
lages reduced to ashes — Hbraries ruthlessly fired — 
glorious cathedrals daily shelled — unarmed citizens 
by thousands deliberately shot to death — large cities 
systematically pillaged and the plunder packed in 
trains and sent back to Germany — tens of thousands 
of women and girls and youths seized and deported 
into slavery — everywhere rapine and pillage and 
plunder and cruelty — milHons of people deUberately 
reduced to starvation, and then huge indemnities 
demanded of the people thus spoiled and plundered. 

We turn to the Army of Northern Virginia and what 
do we see? In four years of tremendous and in- 
creasing conflict no act of plunder, or pillage, or out- 
rage save one (and that had no sanction from Lee) 
set down against it. Here we see an army instinct 
with the spirit of chivalry, from its great commander 



120 THE SOUL OF LEE 

to the humblest private! It invades Pennsylvania, 
and occupies it twenty-one days; fights a great battle, 
or rather a series of great battles besides many minor 
actions, and returns to Virginia leaving no trace of 
violence or rapine behind it. None of the citizens 
are harmed. Their houses, their farms, their vil- 
lages, are immune from injury. We look in vain 
for the print of the iron hoof of war in the country 
trodden by the Army of Northern Virginia. It 
may be said without fear of contradiction, there is 
no stain on the banner under which that army 
fought. It went down in defeat at last, but unsulHed, 
without a stain on its fiery folds, with no deed of 
shame to dim the brightness of its brilliant stars. It 
is doubtful if any army that ever marched has left a 
record that surpasses it for pure disinterested and 
chivalrous valor. They were not — those men who 
followed Lee — soldiers of fortune, but soldiers of 
duty, who endured for four long years all that men 
can endure and dared all that men can dare, in simple 
loyalty to the call of duty as they understood it. 
It is our belief that the impartial pen of history will 
record that its endurance has perhaps rarely been 
equaled, its achievements rarely surpassed in the 
annals of war; not by the British Squares at Fon- 
tenoy, not by Napoleon's Guard at Austerlitz, nor 
by Wellington's infantry at Albuera, or Talavera, 
or Waterloo. 

As to the achievements of the Army of Northern 
Virginia, while under Lee's command, the words of 
Gen. Alexander may here be quoted. He says: 



LEE AND THE ARMY OF NORTHERN VIRGINIA 121 

In the brief period of a thousand days (from June i, 1862, 
to April 9, 1865), with inferior numbers, poorly equipped and 
but badly supplied with food and clothing, it fought seven 
great campaigns, against six picked generals of the enemy, as 
follows: First, against McClellan before Richmond; second, 
against Pope before Washington; third, against McClellan in 
Maryland; fourth, against Burnside before Fredericksburg; 
fifth against Hooper on the Rappahannock; sixth, against 
Meade in Peimsylvania; seventh, against Grant before Rich- 
mond. 

The last campaign endured eleven months, during which 
the guns were scarcely silent a single day. Lee's army at its 
greatest numbered less than 85,000 men. It put hors de combat 
more than 262,000 Federals within the period mentioned.* 

Reflecting upon its history it must be said, that 
while the material of which that army was composed 
had much to do with its prowess and its superb 
morale, yet it is no exaggeration to say that it was 
what it was by the force of Lee's incomparable per- 
sonality. 

Gen. Grant is reported to have said, "Lee was a 
good deal of a headquarters general. ... He was 
almost too old for active service — the best service in 
the field." Nothing could be farther from the 
picture which stands out clearly before us in the 
record of his relations with his army. He was con- 
stantly among his soldiers, inspecting the camps or 
examining the Hues. He shared their hardships and 
their perils. He was not only their commander, 

* Gen. Alexander, Military Memoirs, p. 618. His figures 
are taken from the ofiicial archives. War Record Office, Wash- 
ington. 



122 THE SOUL OF LEE 

but their Father, always caring for their welfare, 
always laboring to supply their wants. He hved 
in tents as they did, in spite of his six and fifty years, — 
sleeping on the ground as they did, — scarcely ever 
during those arduous campaigns allowing his staff 
officers to fix his headquarters in a house. 

If his men often suffered from scanty rations, his 
table was also meagerly supplied — a dinner of cab- 
bage and salt, or cold sweet potatoes, was not 
unusual at his headquarters. 

He would often be in the saddle all day and then 
long hours at his desk, rising to inspect his lines at 
4 A.M. And as he was with his soldiers on the 
march and in the bivouac he was also with them on 
the fiery front of battle, exposing himself almost 
recklessly in spite of the remonstrances of his generals 
and his Staff. At Gettysburg he rode alone into the 
very midst of Pickett's men when they came stream- 
ing back after their bloody repulse. 

In the Wilderness, as already stated, three times 
at critical moments he sprang forward and put him- 
self at the head of his brave troops to recover a lost 
position and avert threatening disaster — only to be 
compelled by the privates in the ranks to retire, 
while they threw themselves at immense sacrifice 
upon the foe and saved the day. "Lee to the 
rear!" shouted the men of Gregg's Texas Brigade, 
as one of their number seized the general's bridle 
rein. Even on the retreat from Petersburg he ex- 
posed himself unsparingly to fire in his eagerness to 
overlook the work of his artillery. 



LEE AND THE ARMY OF NORTHERN VIRGINIA 123 

At Antietam also he was in the midst of the falling 
shells of McClellan's guns. Again, near Richmond, 
in 1864, he and a group of his soldiers attracted the 
fire of the enemy; whereupon Lee ordered the men 
back, but remained himself on the spot and then re- 
tired leisurely, but was observed to stop to pick up 
something, "As if unconscious of danger to him- 
self, Gen. Lee walked across the yard, picked up 
some small object from the ground, and placed it 
upon the hmb of a tree above his head." He had 
risked his life for a7i unfledged sparrow that had fallen 
from its nest.* 

In recalling these examples of Lee's habits in camp 
and on the march, of his bearing on the battlefield, 
and of his laborious attention to his lines of battle 
before an engagement, one cannot but wonder what 
was Gen. Grant's conception of "a Headquarters 
General!" Nor can we easily picture a commander 
capable of greater activity in his army or able to 
sustain more severe fatigue than Lee. What more 
''active service" could he have rendered if he had 
been twenty years younger? Gen. Long testifies 
that Lee was able to bear any amount of fatigue, 
being capable of remaining in his saddle all day 
and at his desk half the night. 

In studying Lee's relation to his army we are im- 
pressed with the fact that the bond between him and 
his soldiers was very human. They did not only 
admire him as a great commander, and repose con- 

* Related by Gen. Long, Memoirs of Lee, p. 387. 



124 THE SOUL OF LEE 

fidence in his military genius to lead them to victory — 
they trusted and loved him — loved him so that they 
were willing to die for him. And Lee, on his part, 
had a personal affection for his men. He knew 
thousands of them by name. He was their Father 
as well as their Commander. Their hardships, their 
sufferings he bore in his heart. When they fell in 
battle his soul was wrung with anguish. "The love 
of our gallant officers and men throughout the army 
causes me to weep tears of blood, and to wish that 
I could never hear the sound of a gun again." 

How different this feeling of the great Confederate 
Chieftain to that of some of the famous generals of 
the world's history who cared for their soldiers only 
as the instruments of winning battles, but personally 
held them in contempt — as mere canaille! 

Lee's soldiers were not to him mere pawns in the 
great game of war but comrades in a great and holy 
cause. 

The outstanding fact in the study of Lee and his 
soldiers is that they not only admired him as a mil- 
itary genius, but had for him a reverential affection, 
which never failed — which he held in defeat as well 
as in victory, — which, in fact, waxed deeper and 
stronger as the dark clouds of adversity gathered 
about him. Truly the paroled prisoner Robert E. 
Lee, President of a little Virginia college, held the 
devotion and enthusiastic admiration of the ex- 
soldiers of the Army of Northern Virginia, and of the 
whole Southern people to a degree that the victor of 
Chancellorsville did not possess! His most recent 



LEE AND THE ARMY OF NORTHERN VIRGINIA 125 

biographer, a New Englander, relates the following 
incident taken from the Memoirs of Capt. R. E. Lee. 
" Lee was riding alone through the woods on his be- 
loved Traveller, when he met an old Confederate. 
'Oh, General,' said the fellow, 'it does me so much 
good to see you that I'm going to cheer.' The gen- 
eral protested the utter inappropriateness. But the 
man cheered just the same. And as the great soldier 
passed slowly out of hearing through the Virginia 
forest, it seems to me that his heart and his eyes 
must have overflowed at the thought of a great 
cause lost, of fideHty in ruin, and of the thousands 
and thousands and thousands who had cheered 
him once and in spirit would go on cheering him 
forever." * 

This paternal afifection of Lee for his soldiers was 
not inconsistent with the exercise of that discipline 
which is an essential element in an effective army. 
He could, upon occasion, be stern and immovable 
in enforcing it. Desertion he would sometimes 
punish with death. 

That he was sometimes too lenient with the failures 
of his generals, even when their delinquencies bore 
disastrous consequences, is the opinion of some of his 
warmest admirers. His patience was infinite; his 
S3nTipathy quick and deep; his exertions for the well- 
being of his men boundless. He was always just. 
Never could he be accused of favoritism. Nepotism 
was abhorrent to his high sense of pubHc responsibility. 

* Bradford, Lee the American, p. 1 26. 



126 THE SOUL OF LEE 

His own son served as a private in an artillery com- 
pany. 

It was no inconsiderable element in his great influ- 
ence with his soldiers that they knew he was a man of 
simple, imaffected piety, — without puritanic severity, 
without pretence, without cant. He would dismount 
from his horse even when battle had been joined, as 
in the Wilderness, and humbly participate in their 
prayer meetings. 

Of his magnanimity much might be said. Two 
instances may be given out of abundant material. 
When the battle of Gettysburg had resulted not in 
victory, as might have been the case had his orders 
been carried out by his corps commanders, but in a 
failure that compelled retreat, Gen. Lee wrote to 
President Davis, "/ have no fault to find with any one 
but myself.^' Not a word of criticism for those who 
had defeated his plans,- — but a noble assumption of 
the whole responsibihty ! 

The other instance is found in a story told by an 
old Grand Army man who had been viewing the 
panorama of the battle of Gettysburg. He said: 

I was at the battle of Gettysburg myself, and an incident 
occurred there which largely changed my views of the Southern 
people. . . . The last day of the fight I was badly wounded. 
A ball shattered my left leg. I lay on the ground not far from 
Cemetery Ridge, and as Gen. Lee ordered his retreat, he and 
his officers rode near me. As they came along I recognized him 
and though faint from exposure and loss of blood, I raised up 
on my hands, looked Lee in the face and shouted as loud as I 
could, "Hurrah for the Union!" The general heard me, 
looked, stopped his horse, dismounted, and came toward me. 



LEE AND THE ARMY OF NORTHERN VIRGINIA 127 

I confess that at first I thought he meant to kill me. But as 
he came up he looked down at me with such a sad expression 
upon his face that all fear left me, and I wondered what he was 
about. He extended his hand to me, and grasping mine 
firmly and looking right into my eyes said, " My son, I hope 
you will soon be well." 

If I live a thousand years I shall never forget the expres- 
sion on Gen. Lee's face. There he was defeated, . . . and 
yet he stopped to say words like those to a wounded soldier 
of the opposition who had taunted him as he passed by! * 

Lee's attitude toward prisoners of war is illustrated 
by a quotation given by his son Capt. R. E. Lee from 
an interview with an English gentleman in 1866, in 
which he said that when there were not rations 
enough both for the prisoners and the army, he gave 
orders that the wants of the prisoners should first be 
attended to, and further stated that he had nothing 
whatever to do with the management of the prisons 
where the Union prisoners were confined. 

He showed the humane spirit in which he con- 
ducted war by his famous order at Chambersburg in 
the Gettysburg campaign, in which he said, "The 
duties exacted of us by civilization and Christianity 
are not less obligatory upon us in the country of the 
enemy than in our own." Gen. Sherman's famous 
dictum, "War is Hell!" is undoubtedly true of war 
as conducted by that commander in Georgia and the 
Carolinas, and as conducted by Sheridan in Vir- 
ginia. It has no application to war as conducted by 
Lee in Pennsylvania — always excepting the horrors 

* See Long's Memoirs, p. 302. 



128 THE SOUL OF LEE 

of the battlefield. Of both these statements let 
Charles Francis Adams be witness. 

That Lee could administer a stinging rebuke in a 
single word is shown by his reported greeting to Gen. 
J. E. B. Stuart, when he rode up to his commander on 
the afternoon of the second day at Gettysburg. 
Looking him gravely in the face Gen. Lee said with 
marked emphasis, "At last, Gen. Stuart! " And on 
the retreat from Petersburg when he saw a certain 
Major General who, having lost a critical battle by 
culpable negligence, and having been relieved of his 
command, he turned to the staff officer riding by his 
side and said with feeling, "Is that man still with this 
Armyl'^ 

So much has been written by many authors of 
Lee's imperturbability and of his perfect poise, that 
some have asked, was there nothing of human frailty 
about the man? Did he never even give way to 
any display of irritation? 

Whoever will study the narratives of his adjutant. 
Col. Taylor, and others close to him will find that 
there were rare occasions when he was irritated, and 
when he did allow some evidence of it to escape him. 
He was a man of fiery spirit. No doubt "the tide 
of blood" ran hot in his veins, but except on the 
rarest occasions and then in but small degree, he 
mastered it as a rider a restive steed. 

On one occasion he said to Col, Taylor, his adju- 
tant, "Col. Taylor, when I lose my temper, don't 
let it make you angry." 

Col. Venable, one of Lee's staff ofl&cers,. writes: 



LEE AND THE ARMY OF NORTHERN VIRGINIA 129 

''No man could see the flush come over that grand 
forehead and the temple veins swell on occasions of 
great trial of patience, and doubt that Lee had the 
high strong temper of a Washington." The brutal 
abuse of a horse would rouse a strong expression of 
indignation. This once broke forth in a letter to a 
member of his family in speaking of the desecration of 
Arlington, — only to be followed by an expression of 
contrition, — "You see what a poor sinner I am, and 
how unworthy to possess what was given me." Be- 
neath his calm exterior there was often concealed a 
tempest of wrath. 

"Tell me," said a Northern writer to a group of 
Southern men in the Cosmos Club at Washington, of 
whom the writer was one, "is there nothing in Lee's 
whole life that partakes of the weaknesses of other 
men? ... I really think his character would be more 
interesting, because more human, if there were some 
moral lapses that could be discovered. Perhaps 
you Southern men . . . can tell me at least of some 
peccadilloes." But none of us could enHghten our 
visitor on that point. At last, however, Mr. Cazenove 
Lee said, "The nearest I can come to an answer to 
your question is to relate an incident that occurred 
at my father's house in Virginia after the war. He 
and Gen. Lee were discussing the war, and my father 
said, 'Ah, Robert, I gave up hope after Stonewall 
Jackson fell!' At this Gen. Lee sprang up in his 
chair and exclaimed, 'Cassius, do you suppose Gen. 
Jackson went about the country fighting battles without 
orders! ' " 



130 THE SOUL OF LEE 

Marvellous indeed was his self-control, but under- 
neath that calm exterior profound and stormy emo- 
tions sometimes stirred, as at Gettysburg after the 
repulse of Pickett's men. How serenely he met them 
on the field of battle, as they came streaming back, 
broken and in disorder! But when night came, and 
physical exhaustion had shaken even his heroic 
nerve, Gen. Imboden gives a truly pathetic picture 
of the great soldier in defeat. It was near midnight 
when he rode up exhausted and dismounted. "He 
threw his arm across his saddle to rest himself and 
fixing his eyes upon the ground, leaned in silence upon 
his equally weary horse; the two formed a striking 
group, as motionless as a statue. After some ex- 
pressions as to Pickett's charge, etc., he added in a 
tone almost of agony, 'Too bad! Too bad! Oh, too 
bad!'"* 

His calm dignity when he met Grant at Appo- 
mattox to surrender the remnant of his army has often 
been described. But who can tell what wild storm of 
feeling was beating within his soul! "I would rather 
die a thousand deaths," he had said beforehand to 
Col. Venable. And again, as Dr. Jones reports, 
"How easily I could get rid of this and be at rest! I 
have only to ride along the lines and all will be over! 
But," he quickly added, ''it is our duty to live, for 
what will become of the women and children of the 
South if we are not here to support and protect 
them?"t 

* Galaxy, vol. XI, p. 509. 
t Jones, Lj/e, p. 380. 



LEE AND THE ARMY OF NORTHERN VIRGINIA 131 

Another eyewitness thus describes his appearance, 
"No one who looked upon him then, as he stood 
there in full view of the disastrous end, can ever 
forget the intense agony written upon his features." * 

Such was the commander of the Army of Northern 
Virginia, glorious in victory, even more glorious in 
defeat, as human as he was heroic, giving glory to 
God in the hour of triumph, bowing submissively, 
though with a breaking heart, to the will of God in. 
the hour of overwhelming disaster. Or, to quote 
the words of an accomphshed mihtary critic of the 
British Army, "In strategy mighty, in battle terrible, 
in adversity as in prosperity a hero indeed, with the 
simple devotion to duty and the rare purity of the 
ideal Christian knight, he joined all the kingly quali- 
ties of a leader of men." 

*Eggleston, A Rebel's Recollections, p. 147. 



IX 
GLIMPSES OF LEE'S ARMY 



^^ Their spirits effervesced. Their wit sparkled. 
Hunger and thirst could not depress them. Rain could 
not damp them. Cold could not chill them. Every 
hardship became a joke. . . . Never was such a triumph 
of spirit over matter. . . . With a gay heart they gave 
their greatest gift. . . . One by one Death challenged 
them. One by one they smiled in his grim visage and 
refused to be dismayed." — A Student in Arms. 



IX 

GLIMPSES OF LEE'S ARMY* 

Writers on the Civil War frequently speak of the 
Southern Army as "the Secession Army." Yet the 
most illustrious leaders of that army, Robert E. Lee 
and "Stonewall" Jackson, to name no more, were in 
fact opposed to secession; though when Virginia at 
length withdrew from the Union, they felt bound to 
follow her. I think it likely indeed that a very 
large proportion of the conspicuous and successful 
officers, and a like proportion also of the men who 
fought in the ranks of the Confederate armies, were 
likewise original Union men — opposed, at any rate, to 
the exercise of the right of secession, even if they 
believed that the right existed. 

It will be remembered that months elapsed between 
the secession of the Gulf States and that of the great 
Border States, Virginia, North Carolina, and Ten- 
nessee, which furnished so large a proportion of the 
soldiers who fought for the Southern Confederacy. 
But, on the 15th of April, 1861, an event occurred 
which instantly transformed those great States into 
Secession States — the proclamation of Abraham 

* The substance of this Chapter is a republication, by kind 
permission, of an article by the author in the Photographic 
History of the War, vol. VIII. 

135 



136 THE SOUL OF LEE 

Lincoln calling upon them to furnish their quota of 
troops to coerce the seceded States back into the 
Union. Even the strongest Federalists, like Ham- 
ilton, had, in the discussions in the Constitutional 
Convention, utterly repudiated and condemned the 
coercion of a State. It was not strange, then, that 
the summons to take up arms and march against their 
Southern brethren, aroused deep indignation in 
these States, and instantly transformed them into 
Secession States. But for that proclamation, the 
Southern Army would not have been much more than 
half its size, and would have missed its greatest 
leaders. 

A glance at its personnel will perhaps be instructive. 
In its ranks are serving side by side the sons of the 
plain farmers, and the sons of the great land owners — 
the Southern aristocrats. Not a few of the men 
who are carrying muskets or serving as troopers are 
classical scholars, the flower of the Southern univer- 
sities. In an interval of the suspension of hostilities 
at the battle of Cold Harbor, a private soldier lies 
on the ground poring over an Arabic grammar — it is 
Crawford H. Toy, who is destined to become the 
famous professor of Oriental languages at Harvard 
University. In one of the battles in the Valley of 
Virginia a volunteer aid of Gen. John B. Gordon is 
severely wounded — it is Basil L. Gildersleeve, who 
has left his professor's chair at the University of 
Virginia to serve in the field. He still lives, wearing 
the laurel of distinction as the greatest Hellenist in 
the English-speaking world. At the siege of Fort 



GLIMPSES OF LEE'S ARMY 137 

Donelson, in 1862, one of the heroic captains who 
yields up his Ufe in the trenches is the Rev. Dabney 
C. Harrison, who raised a company in his own Vir- 
ginia parish, and entered the army at its head. In 
the Southwest a lieutenant-general falls in battle — 
it is Gen. Leonidas Polk, who laid aside his bishop's 
robes to become a soldier, having been educated to 
arms at West Point. 

It is a striking fact that when Virginia threw in her 
lot with her Southern sisters in April, 1861, practically 
the whole body of students at her State University, 
515 out of 530 who were registered from the Southern 
States, enlisted in the Confederate Army. This 
army thus represented the whole Southern people. 
It was a self-levy en masse of the male population 
in all save certain mountain regions in Virginia, 
North CaroHna, Tennessee, Alabama, and Georgia. 

One gets a perhaps new and surprising con- 
ception of the character of the rank and file of 
the Southern Army in such incidents as the fol- 
lowing: Here are mock trials going on in the moot- 
court of a certain artillery company, and the dis- 
cussions are pronounced by a competent authority 
"brilliant and powerful." Here is a group of privates 
in a Maryland infantry regiment in winter-quarter 
huts near Fairfax, Virginia; and among the subjects 
discussed are the following: Vattel and Philmore on 
international law; Humboldt's works and travels; 
the African explorations of Barth; the influence of 
cHmate on the human features; the culture of cotton; 
the laws relating to property. Here are some Vir- 



138 THE SOUL OF LEE 

ginia privates in a howitzer company solemnly 
officiating at the burial of a tame crow; and the exer- 
cises include an English speech, a Latin oration, and 
a Greek ode. 

These Confederate Armies must present to the 
historian who accepts the common view that the 
South was fighting for the perpetuation of the insti- 
tution of slavery a difficult — in fact, an insoluble — 
problem. How could such a motive explain the 
soHdarity of the diverse elements that made up those 
armies? The Southern planter might fight for his 
slaves; but why the poor white man, who had none? 
How could slavery generate such devotion, such 
patient endurance, such splendid heroism, such un- 
conquerable tenacity through four long years of 
painfully unequal struggle? The world acknowl- 
edges the superb valor of the men who fought under 
the Southern Cross — and the no less superb devotion 
of the whole people to the cause of the Confederacy. 

Now is it credible that such valor and such devo- 
tion were inspired by the desire to hold their fellow- 
men in slavery? Is there any example of such a 
phenomenon in all the long records of history? 

Consider, too, another fact for which the historians 
must assign a sufficient motive. On the bronze tab- 
lets in the rotunda of the University of Virginia, 
memorializing the students who fell in the great war, 
there are upwards of five hundred names, and, of 
these, 233 were still privates when they fell; so that, 
considering the number of promotions from the ranks, 
it is certain that far more than half of those alumni 



GLIMPSES OF LEE'S ARMY 139 

who gave up their lives for the Southern cause, vol- 
unteered as private soldiers. They did not wait for 
place or office, but unhesitatingly entered the ranks, 
with all the hardships that the service involved. 

Probably no army ever contained a larger pro- 
portion of young men of high culture among its pri- 
vate soldiers — graduates in arts, in letters, in lan- 
guages, in the physical sciences, in the higher math- 
ematics, and in the learned professions — as the army 
that fought under the Southern Cross. And how 
cheerful — how uncomplaining — how gallant they were ! 
They marched and fought and starved, truly without 
reward. Eleven dollars a month in Confederate 
paper was their stipend. Flour and bacon and 
peanut coffee made up their bill of fare. The hard 
earth, or else three fence rails, tilted up on end, was 
their bed, their knapsacks their pillows, and a flimsy 
blanket their covering. The starry firmament was 
often their only tent. Their clothing — well, we can- 
not describe it. We can only say it was "a thing of 
shreds and patches," interspersed with rents. 

But this was not all. They had not even the 
reward which is naturally dear to a soldier's heart — 
we mean the due recognition of gallantry in action. 
By a strange oversight there was no provision in the 
Confederate Army for recognizing either by deco- 
ration or by promotion on the field, distinguished 
acts of gallantry. No ''Victoria Cross," or its 
equivalent, rewarded even the most desperate acts of 
valor. 

Now with these facts before him, the historian will 



140 THE SOUL OF LEE 

find it impossible to believe that these men drew 
their swords and did these heroic deeds and bore these 
incredible hardships for four long years for the sake 
of the institution of slavery. Everyone who was con- 
versant with the opinions of the soldiers of the South- 
ern Army, knows that they did not wage that tre- 
mendous conflict for slavery. That was a subject 
very httle in their thoughts or on their lips. Not one 
in twenty of those grim veterans, who were so terrible 
on the battlefield, had any financial interest in slavery. 
No, they were fighting for hberty, for the right of self- 
government. They believed the Federal authorities 
were assaihng that right. It was the sacred heritage 
of Anglo-Saxon freedom, of local self-government, 
won at Runnymede, which they believed in peril 
when they flew to arms as one man, from the Potomac 
to the Rio Grande. They may have been right, or 
they may have been wrong, but that was the issue 
they made. On that they stood. For that they 
died. 

Not until this fact is reahzed by the student of the 
great war will he have the solution of the problem 
which is presented by the quahties of the Confederate 
soldier. The men who made up that army were not 
soldiers of fortune, but soldiers of duty, who dared 
all that men can dare, and endured all that men can 
endure, in obedience to what they believed the sacred 
call of Country. They loved their States; they loved 
their homes and their firesides; they were no poH- 
ticians; many of them knew Httle of the warring 
theories of Constitutional interpretation. But one 



GLIMPSES OF LEE'S ARMY 141 

thing they knew- — armed legions were marching upon 
their homes, and it was their duty to hurl them back 
at any cost! 

Such were the private soldiers of the Confederacy. 
Not for fame or for glory, not lured by ambition or 
goaded by necessity, but, in simple obedience to duty 
as they understood it, these men suffered all, sacri- 
ficed all, dared all — and died! 

A conspicuous feature of this Southern Army is 
its Americanism. Go from camp to camp, among the 
infantry, the cavalry, the artillery, and you are im- 
pressed with the fact that these men are, with very 
few exceptions, Americans. Here and there you 
will encounter one or two Irishmen. Major Stiles 
tells a story of a most amusing encounter between 
two gigantic Irishmen at the battle of Gettysburg — 
the one a Federal Irishman, a prisoner, and the other 
a Rebel Irishman, private in the Ninth Louisiana — a 
duel with fists in the midst of the roar of the battle! 
Very, very rarely you will meet a German, hke that 
superb soldier. Major Von Borcke, who so endeared 
himself to "Jeb" Stuart's cavalry. But these excep- 
tions only accentuate the broad fact that the Con- 
federate Army was composed almost exclusively 
of Americans. That throws some Hght on its achieve- 
ments, does it not? 

I think the visitor to the Confederate camps would 
also be struck by the spirit of bonhommie which so 
largely prevailed. These "Johnnie Rebs," in their 
gray uniforms (which, as the war went on, changed in 
hue to butternut brown), are a jolly lot. They have a 



142 THE SOUL OF LEE 

dry, racy humor of their own which breaks out on the 
least provocation. They are often heard cracking 
jokes on the very edge of battle. They were "soldier 
boys" to the bitter end! 

Gen. Rodes, in his report, describing the dark 
and difficult night-passage of the Potomac on the 
retreat from Gettysburg, says, "All the circum- 
stances attending this crossing combined to make it 
an affair not only involving great hardship, but one of 
great danger to the men and company officers; but, 
be it said to the honor of these brave fellows, they 
encountered it not only promptly, but actually with 
cheers and laughter." 

On the other hand, some from the remote country 
districts were Uke children away from home. They 
could not get used to it — and often they drooped, and 
sickened and died, just from nostalgia. In many of 
the regiments during the first six months or more of 
the war, there were negro cooks, but as time went 
on these disappeared, except in the officers' mess. 
Among the Marylanders, it was quite different. 
We had to do our own cooking. Once a week, each 
performed that office for a mess of fifteen hungry men. 
At first we Hved on "slapjacks" — almost as fatal as 
Federal bullets! — and fried bacon; but by degrees we 
learned to make biscuits, and on one occasion two col- 
leagues in the culinary business created an apple 
pie, which the whole mess considered a chef d'ceuvre! 
May we call your attention to those ramrods wrapped 
round with dough and set up on end before the fire? 
The cook turns them from time to time, and, when 



GLIMPSES OF LEE'S ARMY 143 

well browned, he withdraws the ramrod, and, lo! a 
loaf of bread, three feet long and hollow from end to 
end. 

The general aspect of the Confederate camps com- 
pared unfavorably with those of the men in blue. 
They were not, as a rule, attractive in appearance. 
The tents and camp equipage were nothing Hke so 
"smart," so spick and span — very far from it in- 
deed! Our engineer corps were far inferior, lacking 
in proper tools and equipment. The sappers and 
miners of the Federal Army on Cemetery Hill, at 
Gettysburg, did rapid and effective work during the 
night following the first day's battle, as they had 
previously done at Chancellorsville — work which our 
men could not begin to match. When we had to 
throw up breastworks in the field, as at Hagerstown, 
after Gettysburg, it had usually to be done with our 
bayonets. Spades and axes were luxuries at such 
times. Bands of music were rare, and generally of 
inferior quality; but the men made up for it as far 
as they could by a gay insouciance, and by singing 
in camp and on the march. You might see the men 
of the First Maryland Infantry trudging wearily 
through mud and rain, sadly bedraggled by a long 
march, strike up with great gusto their favorite song, 
"Gay and Happy." 

So let the wide world wag as it will, 
We'll be gay and happy still. 

The contrast between the sentiment of the song 
and the environment of the column was sufficiently 



144 THE SOUL OF LEE 

striking. In one respect, we think, our camps had 
the advantage of the Union camps — we had no 
sutlers, and we had no camp followers. 

But though our camp equipage and equipment 
were so inferior to those of our antagonists, we do not 
think any experienced soldier, watching our marching 
columns of infantry or cavalry, or witnessing our 
brigade drills, could fail to be thrilled by the spectacle 
they presented. Here, at least, there was no inferi- 
ority to the army in blue. The soldierly qualities 
that tell on the march, and on the field of battle, 
shone out here conspicuously. A more impressive 
spectacle has seldom been seen in any war than was 
presented by "Jeb" Stuart's brigades of cavalry 
when they passed in review before Gen. Lee at 
Brandy Station in June, 1863. The pomp and 
pageantry of gorgeous uniforms and dazzling equip- 
ment of horse and riders were indeed absent; but 
splendid horsemanship, and that superb esprit de 
corps that marked that veteran legion, and which, 
though not a tangible or a visible thing, yet stamps 
itself upon a marching column — these were unmis- 
takably there. And we take leave to express our own 
individual opinion that the blue-gray coat of the 
Confederate officer, richly adorned with gold lace, and 
his light-blue trousers, and that rakish slouch hat 
he wore made up a uniform of great beauty. Oh, 
it was a gallant array to look upon — that June day, 
so many years ago ! 

When our infantry soldiers came to a river, unless 
it was a deep one, we had to cross it on " Conferedate 



GLIMPSES OF LEE'S ARMY 145 

pontoons," i. e., by marching right through in column 
of fours. This we did twice on one day on the march 
from Culpeper to Winchester at the opening of the 
Gettysburg campaign. 

Among the amusements in camp, card-playing was, 
of course, included; seven-up and vingt-et-un were 
popular. And the pipe was "Johnnie Reb's" fre- 
quent solace. His tobacco, at any rate, was the 
real thing — genuine, no make-believe, Hke his coffee. 
Often there were large gatherings of the men, night 
after night, attending prayer meetings, always with 
preaching added, for there was a strong religious tone 
in the Army of Northern Virginia. One or two 
remarkable revivals took place, notably in the winter 
of 1863-64. 

It seems as we look back, that one of the charac- 
teristics which stood out strongly in the Confederate 
Army was the independence and the initiative of the 
individual soldier. It would have been a better 
army in the field if it had been welded together by a 
stricter discipline; but this defect was largely atoned 
for by the strong individuality of the units in the 
column. It was not easy to demoralize a body com- 
posed of men who thought for themselves and acted in 
a spirit of independence in battle. 

It was a characteristic of the Confederate soldier — 
we do not say he alone possessed it — that he never 
considered himself discharged of his duty to the colors 
by any wound, however serious, so long as he could 
walk, on crutches or otherwise. Look at that private 
in the Thirty-seventh Virginia Infantry — he has been 



146 THE SOUL OF LEE 

hit by a rifle-ball, which, striking him full between 
the eyes, has found its way somehow through and 
emerged at the back of his head. But there he is 
in the ranks again, carrying his musket — while a deep 
depression, big enough to hold a good-sized marble, 
marks the spot where the bullet entered in its futile 
attempt to make this brave fellow give up his service 
with the Confederate banner! Look at Capt. Ran- 
dolph Barton, of another Virginia regiment. He is 
living today with just about one dozen scars on his 
body. He would be wounded; get well; return to 
duty, and in the very next battle be shot again! 
Look at that gallant old soldier. Gen. Ewell. Like 
his brave foeman. Gen. Sickles, he has lost his leg, 
but that cannot keep him at home; he continues to 
command one of Lee's corps almost to the very end 
at Appomattox. Look at Col. R. Snowden Andrews of 
Maryland. At Cedar Moimtain, in August, 1862, a 
shell literally nearly cut him in two; but by a miracle 
he did not die; and, in June, 1863, there he is again 
commanding his artillery battalion! He is bowed 
crooked by that awful wound; he cannot stand 
upright any more, but still he can fight Hke a lion. 

As you walk through the camps, you will see many 
of the men busily poHshing their muskets and their 
bayonets with wood ashes well moistened. "Bright 
muskets" and "tattered uniforms" went together in 
the Army of Northern Virginia. 

Apropos of muskets, you will observe that a large 
portion of those in the hands of the Confederate 
soldiers are stamped "U. S. A."; and when you visit 



GLIMPSES OF LEE'S ARMY 147 

the artillery camps you will note that the three 
inch rifles, the Napoleons, and the Parrott guns, were 
most of them "Uncle Sam's" property, captured 
in battle; and when you inspect the cavalry you will 
find, after the first year, that the Southern troops are 
armed with sabers captured from the Federals.* 
During the first year, before the blockade became 
stringent, Whitworth guns were brought in from 
abroad. But that soon stopped, and we had to look 
largely to "Uncle Sam" for our supply. 

We used to say in the Shenandoah Valley cam- 
paign, of 1862, that Gen. Banks was Gen. Jackson's 
quartermaster-general — yes, and his chief ordnance 
officer, too. Gen. Shields was another officer to 
whom we were much indebted for artillery and small 
arms, and later Gen. Pope.f But these sources of 
equipment sometimes failed us, and so it came to 
pass that some of our regiments were but poorly 
armed even in our best brigades. For instance, the 
Third Brigade in Ewell's corps, one of the best- 
equipped brigades in the army, entered the Gettys- 
burg campaign with 1941 men present for duty, but 

* It is estimated by surviving ordnance officers that not 
less than two-thirds of the artillery in the Army of Northern 
Virginia was captured, especially the 3-inch rifles and the 10- 
pound Parrotts. 

t General Gorgas, Chief of the Confederate Ordnance 
Bureau, stated that from July i, 1861, to Jan. i, 1865, there 
were issued from the Richmond arsenal 323,231 infantry arms, 
34,067 cavalry arms, 44,877 swords and sabers, and that these 
were chiefly arms from battlefields, repaired. 



148 THE SOUL OF LEE 

only 1480 muskets and 1069 bayonets. But this was 
not all, or the worst. Our artillery ammunition was 
inferior to that of our antagonists, which was a great 
handicap to our success. 

When Gen. Alexander, Longstreet's chief of artillery 
at Gettysburg, was asked why he ceased firing when 
Pickett's infantry began its charge — why he did not 
continue shelhng the Federal Hnes over the heads of 
the advancing Confederate column, he replied that 
his ammunition was so defective, he could not cal- 
culate with any certainty where the shells would 
explode; they might explode among Pickett's men, 
and so demorahze rather than support them. It 
will help the reader to realize the inequahty in arms 
and equipment between the two armies to watch a 
skirmish between some of Sheridan's cavalry and a 
regiment of Fitzhugh Lee. Observe that the Federal 
cavalryman fires his rifle seven times without reload- 
ing, while the horseman in gray opposed to him fires 
but once, and then lowers his piece to reload. One 
is armed with the Spencer repeating rifle; the other 
with the old Sharp's rifle. 

In another engagement (at Winchester, September 
19, 1864), see that regiment of mounted men give 
way in disorder before the assault of Sheridan's 
cavalry, and dash back through the infantry. Are 
these men cowards? No, but they are armed with 
long cumbrous rifles utterly unfit for mounted men, 
or with double-barreled shotguns, or old squirrel- 
rifles. What chance has a regiment thus armed, 
and also miserably mounted, against those well- 



GLIMPSES OF LEE'S ARMY 149 

armed, well-equipped, well-mounted, and well-dis- 
ciplined Federal cavalrjrmen?* 

Another feature of the conditions prevailing in the 
Confederate Army may be here noted. Look at Lee's 
veterans as they march into Pennsylvania, in June, 
1863. See how many of them are barefooted — 
literally hundreds in a single division. The great 
battle of Gettysburg was precipitated because Gen, 
Heth had been informed that he could get shoes in 
that Httle town for his barefooted men ! 

These hardships became more acute as the war 
advanced, and the resources of the South were 
gradually exhausted, while at the same time the 
blockade became so effective that her ports were her- 
metically sealed against the world. With what grim 
determination the Confederate soldier endured cold 
and nakedness and hunger I need not attempt to 
describe, but there was a trial harder than all these to 
endure, which came upon him in the fourth year of 
the war. Letters began to arrive from home telling 
of food scarcity on his little farm or in the cabin 
where he had left his wife and children. Brave as the 
Southern women were, rich and poor alike, they 
could not conceal altogether from their husbands 

* The arms and equipment of the Confederate Army will be 
found fully discussed by Professor J. W. Mallet, late Super- 
intendent of the Ordnance Laboratories of the Confederate 
States, and Captain 0. E. Hunt, U. S. A., in the chapter on 
the "Organization and Operation of the Ordnance Depart- 
ment of the Confederate Army," in the volume on "Forts and 
Artillery." 



150 THE SOUL OF LEE 

the sore straits in which they found themselves. 
Many could not keep back the cry: "What am I to 
do? Food is hard to get. There is no one to put 
in the crop. God knows how I am to feed the chil- 
dren!" 

So a strain truly terrible was put upon the loyalty 
of the private soldier. He was almost torn asunder 
between love for his wife and children and fidelity 
to the flag under which he was serving. What 
wonder if hundreds, yes thousands, in those early 
spring months of 1865, gave way under the pressure, 
sHpped out of the Confederate ranks, and went home 
to put in the crop for their little families, meaning to 
return to the colors as soon as that was done! Tech- 
nically, they were deserters, but not in the heart or 
faith, poor fellows! Still, for Lee's army the result 
was disastrous. It was seen in the thinning ranks 
that opposed Grant's mighty host, week after week. 
This is the South's explanation of the fact, which the 
records show, that while at the close of the war there 
were over a million men under arms in the Federal 
Armies, the aggregate of the Confederates was but 

i33;433- 

How could an army so poorly equipped, so imper- 
fectly armed, so ill fed and ill clothed, win out in a 
contest with an army so vastly its superior in numbers 
and so superbly armed and equipped? How could 
an agricultural people, unskilled in the mechanical 
arts, therefore unable to supply properly its armies 
with munitions and clothing, prevail against a great, 
rich, manufacturing section hke the North, whose 



GLIMPSES OF LEE'S ARMY 151 

foreign and domestic trade had never been so pros- 
perous as during the great war it was waging from 
1861 to 1865? 

Remember, also, that by May, 1862, the armies of 
the Union were in permanent occupancy of western 
and middle Tennessee, of nearly the whole of Louisi- 
ana, of parts of Florida, of the coast of North and 
South CaroHna and of southeastern, northern, and 
western Virginia. Now the population thus ex- 
cluded from the support of the Confederacy amounted 
to not less than 1,200,000. It follows that, for the 
last three years of the war, the unequal contest was 
sustained by about 3,800,000 Southern whites with 
their slaves against the vast power of the Northern 
States. And yet none of these considerations furnishes 
the true explanation of the failure of the Confeder- 
ate Armies to establish the Confederacy. It was not 
superior equipment. It was not alone the iron will 
of Grant, or the strategy of Sherman. A power 
mightier than all these held the South by the throat 
and slowly strangled its army and its people. The 
power was Sea Power. The Federal Navy, not the 
Federal Army, conquered the South. 

"In my opinion," said Field-Marshal Viscount 
Wolseley, in a private letter to the author already 
quoted, "in my opinion, as a student of war, the 
Confederates must have won, had the blockade of 
the Southern ports been removed by us." Compare 
with this mature opinion of the accompHshed 
English soldier the words of Hon. Hugh McCul- 
loch, one of Lincoln's Secretaries of the Treasury. 



152 THE SOUL OF LEE 

"It was the blockade that isolated the Confederate 
States and caused their exhaustion. If the markets 
of Europe had been open to them for the sale of 
their cotton and tobacco, and the purchase of 
suppHes for their armies, their subjugation would 
have been impossible. It was not by defeats in 
the field that the Confederates were overcome, but 
by the exhaustion resulting from their being shut up 
within their own domain, and compelled to rely upon 
themselves and their own production. Such was 
the devotion of the people to their cause, that the 
war would have been successfully maintained, if the 
blockade had not cut off all sources of supply and 
bankrupted their treasury." Again he says: "It 
must be admitted that the Union was not saved by 
the victories of its armies, but by the exhaustion of its 
enemies." Charles Francis Adams, in his oration 
on Gen. Lee, vigorously maintains the same view, 
and Col. Hilary A. Herbert, while Secretary of the 
Navy, dehvered an elaborate address in 1896, in 
which he demonstrated the correctness of that inter- 
pretation of the true cause of the failure of the South. 
In concluding, we may recall the well-known fact 
that the men in gray and the men in blue, facing 
each other before Petersburg, fraternized in those 
closing months of the great struggle. A Confederate 
officer, aghast at finding one night the trenches on his 
front deserted, discovered his men were all over in 
the Federal trenches, playing cards. The rank and 
file had made a truce till a certain hour ! 



X 

THE NUMERICAL STRENGTH OF THE 
CONFEDERATE ARMY 



Exigni numero, sed hello vivida virtus. 

"It will be difficult to get the world to understand the 
odds against which we fought.'^ — Robert E. Lee. 

"No one, certainly, since the time of Napoleon has 
conquered against such immense odds." — London Times. 



X 

THE NUMERICAL STRENGTH OF THE 
CONFEDERATE ARMY 

To estimate at all correctly the military achieve- 
ments of Gen. Lee, we must consider the great odds 
against which he fought, as to numbers, as well as 
resources. It will be helpful, therefore, to set before 
the reader a reasonable estimate of the numerical 
strength of the Confederate Armies as a whole. 

Southern writers generally estimate that the Con- 
federate Armies had on their muster rolls, as fighting 
men, from first to last, from 600,000 to 650,000 men. 

Many Northern writers, on the other hand, esti- 
mate the actual enrollment of the Confederate Armies 
as more than 1,100,000 — even 1,500,000 men. 

Now there are five Unes of independent evidence 
which support the Southern conclusion upon this 
question. 

I. Our figures are supported by the statements of a 
number of men who were in position to know what 
was the total effective strength of the Southern 
Armies. Among them were Gen. Cooper, adjutant- 
general of the Confederate Armies, writing in 1869 
(see Southern Historical Society Papers, vol. VII, p. 
287); Dr. A. T. Bledsoe, Assistant Secretary of War; 
Gen. John Preston, Chief of the Conscription Bureau; 

155 



156 THE SOUL OF LEE 

Vice-President Alexander H. Stephens (War Between 
the States, 1870, vol. II, p. 630); Gen. Jubal A. Early, 
(Southern Historical Papers, vol. II, p. 20); Dr. 
Joseph Jones (official report, June, 1890, Southern 
Historical Society Papers, XIK, 14), and Gen. Marcus 
J. Wright — who now, however, puts the numbers at 
700,000 (Southern Historical Society Papers, 19, 254). 
We ask what better authorities on this subject could 
be named than the adjutant-general of the army, the 
Assistant Secretary of War, and Chief of the Con- 
scription Bureau of the Confederate States? 

In August, 1869, Dr. Joseph Jones sent to Gen. 
Cooper a carefully prepared paper on this subject, 
maintaining the above estimate and asking his opin- 
ion as to the accuracy of the data contained therein. 
Gen. Cooper repHed that after having "closely exam- 
ined" the paper he had "come to the conclusion, from 
his general recollection," that "it must be regarded 
as nearly critically correct." Is it credible that the 
adjutant-general of the Confederate Army should 
have given as his opinion that this number — 600,000, 
— was "nearly critically correct," if in fact there had 
been upon the rolls of the Confederate Armies twice 
that number, — 1,277,000 men, — as Gen. Chas. Francis 
Adams would have us believe? 

II. By adding together the Confederate prisoners 
in the hands of the United States at the close of the 
war, 98,000; the soldiers who surrendered in 1865, 
174,223; those who were killed or died of wounds, 
74,508; died in prison, 26,439; ^^^ of disease, 
59,277; died from other causes, 40,000; discharged, 



STRENGTH OF CONFEDERATE ARMIES 157 

57,411; deserters, 83,372; we get a total of 613,230. 
These figures as to the killed and died of wounds, 
and of disease, are taken from Fox's monumental 
work on regimental losses. He "conjectures" that 
nearly 20,000 must be added to the 74,508 given 
above, making 94,000; but gives no grounds for this. 

III. Again, the official report of Gen. S. 
Cooper, Adjutant-General, dated March i, 
1862 (127 W. R. 963), states the aggregate 
of the Confederate Armies, including armed 

and organized militia, ofiicers and men, as. . 340,250 

Gen. Preston, Superintendent of Con- 
scription, C. S. A., reports from February, 
1862, to February, 1865 (W. R., series 4, vol. 
3, p. iioi): Conscriptions (exclusive of 

Arkansas and Texas) 81,993 

EnHstments east of the Mississippi River. . . 76,206 

498,449 
Estimated conscriptions and enHstments 

west of the river and elsewhere 1 20,000 

Total 618,449 

IV. Now compare with these reports the following 
statement from the New York Tribune of June 26, 
1867: 

"Among the documents which fell into our hands 
at the downfall of the Confederacy are the returns, 
very nearly complete, of the Confederate Armies 
from their organization in the summer of 186 1 down 
to the spring of 1865. These returns have been care- 



158 THE SOUL OF LEE 

fully analyzed, and I am enabled to furnish the returns 
in every department and for almost every month 
from these official sources. We judge in all 600,000 
different men were in the Confederate ranks during 
the war." 

This was accompaneid by a detailed tabular state- 
ment. 

Is not this good secondary evidence as to the 
numbers of men in the Confederate Army, especially 
when we remember the statement of Gen. Cooper, 
late adjutant-general of the Confederate Armies? 
He says: 

"The files of this office which could best afford this 
information (as to numbers) were carefully boxed up 
and taken on our retreat from Richmond to Char- 
lotte, North CaroUna, where they were, unfortu- 
nately, captured, and, as I learn, are now in Wash- 
ington." These files, be it remembered, have never 
been examined by any Southern writer. 

Observe also that the American Encyclopedia 
(1875), of which Mr. Charles A. Dana, late Assistant 
Secretary of War, U. S., was editor, quotes Gen. 
Cooper's statement as to numbers, without comment, 
thus tacitly admitting the truth of that statement. 
Can it be justly said, in the fight of these facts, 
that the estimate usually given by Southern writers 
is "based on assertion only"? 

V. There is a fifth fine upon which we are led to a 
very similar conclusion. 

In the work of Lieut-Col. Wm. F. Fox, Regimental 
Losses in the Civil War, we find the strength of the 



STRENGTH OF CONFEDERATE ARMIES 159 

Confederate Armies furnished by the seceded States 
and by the Border States as well, reckoned as follows: 
529 regiments and 85 battalions of infantry; 127 
regiments and 47 battahons of cavalry; 8 regiments 
and I battalion of partisan rangers; 5 regiments and 
6 battalions of heavy artillery, and 261 batteries of 
light artillery — in all equivalent to 764 regiments of 
10 companies. In making this statement Col. Fox 
assures his readers that "no statistics are given 
that are not warranted by the official records." 

As to the size of the regiments we get some light 
from the following reports: The Confederate adju- 
tant-general reports in March, 1862, an average 
strength of 823 men in 369 regiments and 89 battalions 
(127 W. R. 963). Beauregard's Corps (32 regiments) 
is reported August 31, 1861, as numbering 1037 men 
to the regiment (5 W. R. 824). Longstreet's Vir- 
ginia troops, June 23, 1862, averaged 754 men to the 
regiment. (14 W. R. 614, 615.) 

But more important is the legislation of the Con- 
gress. The Confederate Act of March 6, 186 1, pre- 
scribed for infantry companies the number of 104, 
and for cavalry 72, which gives, for an infantry 
regiment (10 companies) 1040 men, and for a cavalry 
regiment 720 men — provided the ranks were full, 
which was by no means the rule but rather the excep- 
tion. Observe now that in November, 1861, the 
War Department prescribed that no infantry com- 
pany should be accepted with less than 64 men and 
no cavalry company with less than 60 and no artillery 
company with less than 70. On this basis infantry 



160 THE SOUL OF LEE 

regiments might number only 640 men and cavalry- 
regiments only 600. 

This marked change in the standard of the size 
of companies and regiments prescribed by the War 
Department in November, 1861, as compared with 
the Act of March, 1861, lowering the requisite number 
of men in an infantry regiment from 1040 to 640, 
and in a cavalry regiment from 720 to 600, is sug- 
gestive of the fact that it was not found easy to raise 
regiments of the size originally prescribed. 

Now in calculating the strength of the Confederate 
Army from the number of regiments, we shall prob- 
ably approximate a correct result by taking the mean 
between the larger and smaller number just referred 
to. But the mean between 1040 and 640 is 840, and 
that between 720 and 600 is 660. 

Applying this standard to Col. Fox's statement of 
the troops in the entire Confederate Army, we get the 
the following result: 

Men. . 

529 regiments of infantry, 840 each 444,360 

85 battalions infantry, 400 each 34,000 

127 regipients cavalry, 600 each 76,200 

47 battalions cavalry, 400 each 18,800 

261 batteries light artillery, 70 each 16,270 

5 regiments heavy artillery, 800 each 4,000 

6 battalions heavy artillery, 400 each 2,400 

8 regiments partisan rangers, 700 each S,6oo 

I battalion partisan rangers 350 

601,908 

The size of infantry and cavalry battalions and of 
regiments and battalions of heavy artillery in this 



STRENGTH OF CONFEDERATE ARMIES 161 

calculation, as well as of the regiments of partisan 
rangers, is in each case suggested by that accom- 
plished and experienced officer. Col. Walter H. 
Taylor, adjutant-general on the staff of Gen. Robert 
E. Lee. His figures may be rather high — certainly 
they are not too low. Of course such a calculation is 
necessarily only approximate, but the basis on which 
it is made appears reasonably reliable. To one who 
had personal observation of the armies in Virginia 
from the first battle' of Manassas to Appomattox, the 
standard of strength in regiments and battalions in 
the field above adopted, seems in conformity with the 
facts. 

These five lines of evidence appear to give strong 
support to the conclusion that the Southern writers 
allude to. 

Let us add, however, some important considera- 
tions of a general nature bearing on the problem. 
I. During the first year of the war the Confederate 
Government could not have availed itself of even 
500,000 men for its armies, inasmuch as it was 
utterly unable to arm and equip them. The supply 
of arms and of artillery was utterly inadequate for 
even half that number.* As the war progressed the 
muskets, the sabres, the cannon, used in the Con- 
federate Army, if examined, would have been found 

* The author acted as adjutant of the Third Brigade, A. 
N. Va., in the Gettysburg campaign. Even then, in the third 
year of the war, and in that best equipped army, the returns 
showed only 1480 muskets to 1941 men in the brigade. One- 
fourth of the command was without arms. 



162 THE SOUL OF LEE 

to have been in larger part captured on the field of 
battle, Pompey the Great is reported to have said, 
"I have only to stamp with my foot to raise legions 
from the soil of Italy." Had Jefferson Davis been 
able by the stamp of his foot to summon 1,000,000 
men to the Confederate colors in the spring of 1861, 
what advantage would it have been? He could not 
have armed them, even if he could have fed and clothed 
and transported them. 

2. The fact must not be overlooked that by May, 
1862, the Northern Armies were in permanent occu- 
pation of middle and west Tennessee, nearly the 
whole of Louisiana, part of Florida, the coasts of 
North and South Carolina, southeastern Virginia, 
much of northern Virginia, and practically the whole 
of that part of Virginia known as Western Virginia. 
The population thus excluded from the support of the 
Confederacy may be estimated conservatively at 
1,200,000, leaving 3,800,000 to bear the burden of the 
war. Hence the estimate of the arms-bearing popu- 
lation in 1862, when the real tug began, would be, 
according to the accepted ratio, not 1,000,000, but 
760,000. Of this number, one-fifth would be regu- 
larly exempt, i. e., 152,000; and many thousands 
more were detailed for various branches of industry. 
Doubtless during the first year thousands entered the 
Confederate Army from this territory — a fair pro- 
portion of the 340,000 on the muster rolls in March, 
1862; but the conscript law could not operate, never 
did operate — ^in this fourth of the Southern territory. 

3. The seceded States (including West Virginia) 



STRENGTH OF CONFEDERATE ARMIES 163 

furnished the Northern Armies, according to the 
returns of the War Department, 86,000 men. The 
records of the War Department show a total of white 
soldiers from all Southern States, including Ken- 
tucky, Missouri, Maryland, West Virginia, Delaware 
and District of Columbia, of 295,481. 

4. It must be remembered that while the unanimity 
with which the Southern people supported the war has 
perhaps never been surpassed in so large a revolution, 
yet there was a large element of disloyalty, especially 
in the mountainous regions of the South. For 
instance, in the Valley of Virginia there were large 
numbers of Quakers and Dunkards, all opposed to 
war. There were also in that region the numerous 
descendants of the Hessian prisoners, who were not 
in sympathy with us. The number of Union men in 
the South who did not take up arms has been esti- 
mated at 80,000. 

5. It must also be remembered that ''there was 
also an element of baser metal, — men who begrudged 
the sacrifice for liberty and shirked danger." 

6. It has been said that the Confederate States 
passed the most drastic conscript law on record — 
which may be true; but it is a mistake to suppose 
that this law was successfully executed. Thus, 
Gen. Cobb writes, December, 1864, from Macon, 
Georgia, to the Secretary of War: "I say to you that 
you will never get the men into the service who ought 
to be there, through the conscript camp. It would 
require the whole army to enforce the conscript law 
if the same state of things exists throughout the 



164 THE SOUL OF LEE 

Confederacy which I know to be the case in Georgia 
and Alabama, and I may add Tennessee." (W. R., 
series 4, vol. 3, p. 964.) 

Again, H. W. Walters, writing from Oxford, Mis- 
sissippi, to the Department, December, 1864, says: 
"I regard the conscript department in Georgia, 
Alabama, and Mississippi as almost worthless." 
Yet again Gen. T. H, Holmes reports to Adjutant- 
Gen. Cooper as to North Carolina, April 29, 1864: 
''After a full and complete conference with Col. 
Mallett, commandant of conscription, ... I am 
pained to report that there is much disaffection in 
many of the counties, which, emboldened by the 
absence of troops, are being organized in some places 
to resist enrolHng officers." And Gen. Kemper re- 
ports, December 4, 1864, that in his belief there were 
40,000 men in Virginia out of the army between the 
ages of eighteen and forty-five. (W. R., series 4, 
vol. 3, p. 855.) 

In support of his thesis that the whole miUtary 
population was enrolled in the Confederate Armies 
Col. Livermore quotes a letter of Gen. Lee, urging 
the necessity of "getting out our entire arms-bearing 
population in Virginia and North Carolina." But 
this letter, written October 4, 1864, six months before 
the surrender, is strong evidence that up to that 
time the stringent conscript laws had failed to get 
out even in Virginia and North Carolina, "the 
entire arms-bearing population." — (Livermore, Num- 
bers and Losses, p. 17.) 

Col. Livermore quotes another letter of Gen. Lee, 



STRENGTH OF CONFEDERATE ARMIES 165 

dated September i6, 1864, in confirmation of his 
opinion that the conscription laws were thoroughly 
enforced, in which Gen. Lee speaks of the "im- 
perious necessity of getting all our men subject to 
miUtary duty in the field " ; but we must note that the 
General adds, I get no additions. ^^ {Id., p. 17.) Is 
that statement consistent with the rigid and suc- 
cessful enforcement of the conscript law? Is it not 
rather the most conclusive evidence that it was not 
successfully enforced? Or is our Boeotian wit so 
dull that we cannot see the point? If so, we pray 
to be enhghtened! 

The statement is often made that the Confederate 
Conscription embraced all white males between 16 
and 60 years of age. This is an error. The first 
Act, April 16, 1862, embraced men between 18 and 35 
years; the second, of September 27, 1862, men be- 
tween 18 and 45 years; the third and last, of Feb- 
ruary 17, 1864, men between 17 and 50. Both Gen. 
Adams and Col. Livermore acknowledge this. Yet 
the latter rests his argument on the supposition that 
the Conscription gathered in all males between 16 
and 60 years. 

In further illustration of this subject, I may point 
out that one of the difiiculties confronting the con- 
script officers was the opposition of the governors of 
some of the States, notably the Governor of Mis- 
sissippi, the Governor of North Carolina, and the 
Governor of Georgia. Thus the doctrine of States 
Rights, which was the bedrock of the Southern Con- 
federacy, became a barrier to the effectiveness of 



166 THE SOUL OF LEE 

the Confederate Government ! South Carolina passed 
an exemption law which nullified to a certain extent 
the conscript laws of the Confederacy, and Governor 
Vance of North Carolina proposed "to try title with 
the Confederate Government in resisting the claims 
of the conscript officers to such citizens of North Car- 
olina as he made claim to for the proper administra- 
tion of the State." 

"The laws of North Carolina," Gen. Preston com- 
plains (W. R. 4, 3, p. 867), "have created large num- 
bers of officers, and the Governor of that State has 
not only claimed exemption for those officers, but for 
all persons employed in any form by the State of 
North Carolina, such as workers in factories, salt- 
makers, etc." 

"This bureau has no power to enforce the Confed- 
erate law in opposition to the . . . claims of the 
State." 

Gov. Brown of Georgia forbade the enrollment of 
"large bodies of the citizens of Georgia." 

The number is supposed to have reached 8000 
men liable to Confederate serivce. Gen. Preston 
complains in like strain of the action of the Governor 
of Mississippi. 

There is an important report by Gen. Preston in 
February, 1865 (W. R. 4, 3, pp. 1099-1111). In 
this he gives the number of exempts allowed by the 
Conscript Bureau in seven States, and parts of two 
States, east of the Mississippi as 66,586. 

He then gives the agricultural details, details for 
public necessity, and for government service, con- 



STRENGTH OF CONFEDERATE ARMIES 167 

tractors and artisans, a total of 21,414 — the whole 
aggregating 87,990 men. 

In another report, already referred to, November, 
1864, he gives the number of State officers exempted 
on the certificates of governors in nine States as 18,843. 
This, with the preceding, makes a grand total of 
106,833. 

These are exemptions under the Confederate 
States' law in seven States, and in parts of two 
States. They do not include the States west of the 
Mississippi. But in addition to these there were 
many thousand exemptions under purely State laws. 
We have no complete record of these last; but in the 
State of Georgia alone we have a record of 11,031 
such exemptions. 

7. We must also consider the large numbers of men 
employed on the railroads, in the government depart- 
ments, in State offices, and in the various branches 
of manufacture necessary for the support of the 
Army and of the people; and in directing the agri- 
cultural labor of the slaves. Factories were started 
for making swords, bayonets, muskets, percussion 
caps, powder, cartridges, cartridge boxes, belts, and 
other equipment; for clothing, for caps and shoes, 
for harness and saddles, for artillery-caissons and 
carriages; for guns, cannon and powder. 

We may also refer to the statement of Gen. Kemper 
that in December, 1864, "the returns of the bureau, 
obviously imperfect and partial, show 28,035 ''^^^ i^ 
the State of Virginia between eighteen and forty-five 
exempt and detailed for all causes." The South 



168 THE SOUL OF LEE 

having an agricultural population, it was necessary, 
as just said, when war came, to organize manufac- 
tories of every kind of equipment for the Army. 

After all, the most important question to determine 
is the number of men actually serving with the colors 
in the armies of the Confederate States. And even 
if we admit an enrollment in the Confederate Army of 
700,000, and reduce our estimates of exemptions and 
details for special work from 125,000 to 100,000, there 
remain apparently for service in the field only about 
600,000 men; and that, I suppose, is what Gen. 
Cooper and other Southern authorities had in mind. 

We know approximately the respective numbers in 
the great battles of the war, and we submit that these 
numbers are far more consistent with the maximum 
of 600,000 serving with the colors than with the max- 
imum of 1,200,000.* If, indeed, the Confederacy 
had been able to muster in arms 1,200,000 men, it is 
greatly to the discredit of their able generals that 
never in any one battle were they able to confront 
the enemy with more than 80,000 men. 

* Thus, to quote that able and expert authority Gen. Marcus 
J. Wright: Battles around Richmond (1862), Lee, 80,835; 
McClellan, 115,249. At Antietam, Confederates, 35,255; 
Federals, 87,164. At Fredericksburg, Confederates, 78,110; 
Federals, 110,000. At Chancellorsville, Confederates, 57,212; 
Federal, 131,661. At Gettysburg, Confederates, 64,000; 
Federals, 95,000. At the Wilderness, Confederates, 63,981; 
Federals, 141,160. 



STRENGTH OF CONFEDERATE ARMIES 169 



THE MILITARY POPULATION OF THE CONFEDERACY 

In the month of May, 1862, as we have shown 
above, at least one-fourth of the Southern territory 
had been wrenched from the control of the Confed- 
erate Government. In the territory remaining there 
was in round numbers a population of about 3,800,000 
souls. The mihtary population then should have 
been 760,000. 

To this must be added, by the extension of the 
mihtary age down to 17 and up to 50, 10 per cent — 
that is, in all, six additional years, 76,000. 

Then we must make a further addition (adopting 
Gen. Chas. Francis Adams' ratio), for youths reaching 
mihtary age in four years, of 12 per cent of the mil- 
itary population, or 91,200 men. This, with the age 
extension addition — 76,000 — makes a total of 167,200 
which, added to the original estimated population of 
760,000, makes a grand total of 927,200. 

To this number Mr. Adams would add the men 
furnished by the Border States to the Confederate 
Army, viz. (as is alleged), 117,000, a grand available 
total of 1,044,200. 

But this estimate of 117,000 men furnished the 
Confederate Army by the Border States (Maryland, 
West Virginia, Kentucky, Missouri) cannot be relied 
upon as even approximately accurate. For example, 
it included 20,000 men alleged to have been furnished 
by the State of Maryland. But a careful examina- 



170 THE SOUL OF LEE 

tion of all the Maryland organizations, including 
several companies in Virginia regiments, gives a total 
of only 4580 from the State of Maryland. 

To sum up this part of the argument: Let 
it be granted that there was an available 
military population, first and last, in that 
part of the Confederacy not occupied by the 
Federal Armies, of 927,200, to which may be 
added volunteers first year of war from terri- 
tory occupied by Federal forces after May, 
1862 85,000 

And also men from Border States 75, 000 

Aggregate 1,087,200 

Deductions from this as follows: 

Natural death rate in two and one-half 
years, before being enrolled in Army, 2§ 
per cent ii,o55 

Southern men from Confederate States 
in U. S. Army 55, 000 

Disloyal, estimated 80,000 

Exempt for physical and mental disability: 

Twenty per cent of the whole (after de- 
ducting the two previous items), viz., 782,- 
200 158,440 

304,495 
Leaving available aggregate 782,705 

Aggregate 1,087,200 



STRENGTH OF CONFEDERATE ARMIES 171 

Now let us remember that out of this available ag- 
gregate (exaggerated though we believe the number 
to be), there had to be created for the service of the 
Confederate States three armies, — an army of soldiers, 
an army of civil servants and an army of industrial 
and agricultural workers. If we put the strength of 
the fighting army at 620,000, there will remain for 
the other two armies 162,000 men, — and we have 
seen grounds for believing that there were 40,000 
soldiers detailed for special work, and 1 20,000 exempt 
as State officers, workmen in various occupations, 
agricultural and necessary purposes, mechanics, 
railway servants, etc. And it may be asked with 
confidence whether for all these manifold purposes 
162,000 men can be considered an excessive or un- 
reasonable number? To support the army in the 
field, to equip the civil governments of eleven great 
States, and to supply the fife blood of civilization in a 
country of such vast extent as the Southern Con- 
federacy, necessarily absorbed the energies of a great 
number of men. 

Finally consider the following record : 

Officers and men in all the Confederate Armies, 
February, 1865: 

Aggregate for duty 160,000 

Aggregate present and absent. 358,000 

(W. R. iv, iii, p. 1182). 

Gen. Marcus Wright, an expert authority, estimates 
the strength of the Confederate Armies at the close 
of the war, thus : 



172 THE SOUL OF LEE 

Present 157,613 

Absent 117,387 

Total 275,000 

And of the Union Army thus: 

Present 797,807 

Absent 202,700 

1,000,507 

Compare also the fact that there were mustered out 
of the Union Army at the end of the War 1,034,000 
men, and in all the Confederacy there were surrendered 
Confederate soldiers to the number of 174,000 only, 
and this included all paroled men in hospitals or in 
the homes, as well as those in armies. 

No wonder Lee wrote to Early shortly after the war, 
"/^ will he difficult to get the world to understand 
the odds against which we fought ^ 

Reviewing the whole record we may still claim for 
the Armies of the Southern Confederacy the encom- 
ium passed by Virgil nearly two thousand years ago: 

'^Exigiii numero, sed bello vivida virtus.'' 

Light is shed upon the question of the numerical 
strength of the Confederate Armies by a consideration 
of the numbers in the armies of the nations of Europe 
at the present time. 

It will be conceded that the Southern States were 
not under greater pressure to put forth all their 
strength, than are the nations now at war. Now if 
Mr. Chas. Francis Adams' estimate of the number 
of men at the front in the South be taken as the 



STRENGTH OF CONFEDERATE ARMIES 173 

standard {Military Studies, p. 285-6) what should 
be the size of the armies of Belgium, France and 
England and Germany today? 

That is to say, If the Confederate States, with a 
white population of 5,000,000, really mustered an 
army of at least 1,200,000 men, as Mr. Adams de- 
clares, what should be the size of the armies now 
contending in Europe, if the same proportion obtains? 

Here is the answer: 

Little Belgium, with a population of 7,000,000 
should have an army of 1,680,000 men (she has per- 
haps 300,000 or possibly 400,000). Great Britain 
and Ireland with a population of say 45,000,000 
should have an army of 10,800,000 (she has 5,000,000, 
of which about 1,000,000 come from her overseas 
colonies not included in the population given). 
France, with a population of say 40,000,000 should 
have an army of 9,600,000 (she may actually have 
4,500,000). And Germany with a population of say 
68,000,000 should have an army of 16,000,000 (does 
she even reach 8,000,000, exclusive of Austria's con- 
tingent?) 

On the other hand if we accept as approximately 
correct the highest Southern estimate of the strength 
of the Confederate Armies, viz., about 650,000, and 
apply the same ratio to the countries just named, 
Belgium would muster 910,000; Great Britain (ex- 
clusive of her colonies), 5,850,000; France, 5,200,000, 
and Germany, 8,840,000. 

These figures seem to furnish conclusive practical 
proof of the grave error of Mr. Adams' estimate. 



XI 

LEE AFTER THE SURRENDER 



"// is our duty to live^ — Robert E. Lee. 

^^ Abandon all these local animosities and make your 
sons Americans^' — Robert E. Lee. 

"/ must abide the fortunes, and share the fate of my 
people.^^ — Robert E. Lee. 

^^The death of a hero convinces all of Eternal Life; 
they are unable to call it a tragedy J ^ — A Student in 
Arms. 

"I think it wisest not to keep open the sores of the war, 
but to follow the example of those nations who en- 
deavored to obliterate the marks of civil strife, and to 
commit to oblivion the feelings it engender ed.^^ — Robert 
E. Lee. 

"/ have a self-imposed task which I must accomplish. 
I have led the young men of the South in battle; I have 
seen many of them fall under my standard. I shall 
devote my life now to training young men to do their 
duty in life." — Robert E. Lee. 



XI 

LEE AFTER THE SURRENDER 

The story of Lee's life after the war is an epic in 
itself. Those five years are radiant with a serene 
light undimmed by one word or act which his de- 
voted people would wish to blot from the record. 
As a commander, though the greatest of his time, 
he had made mistakes, which none would be more 
ready to acknowledge than himself; but as the un- 
crowned king of a defeated people, — as the exemplar 
and mentor to whom the people of the South looked 
for guidance and inspiration under the cruel condi- 
tions of the Reconstruction period, he committed 
no error that any keen-eyed critic has yet been able 
to discover. 

Promptly and bravely he took the lead in coun- 
selling loyal submission to the government. Writing 
to Gov. Letcher he urged that "all should unite in an 
honest effort to obliterate the effects of the war and 
restore the blessings of peace." He advised ''the 
healing of all dissensions." Again he writes: 

I believe it to be the duty of every one to unite in the 
restoration of the country and the reestablishment of peace and 
harmony. 

And what he advised others to do he did himself, 
setting a public example of submission to the 

177 



178 THE SOUL OF LEE 

authority of the government by applying to Pres- 
ident Johnson for amnesty and pardon. His mili- 
tary secretary, Col. Chas. Marshall, writes: 

He set to work to use his great influence to reconcile the 
people of the South to the hard consequences of their defeat, 
to inspire them with hope, to lead them to accept, truly and 
frankly, the government that had been established by the 
result of the war, and thus relieve them from the military 
rule. 

When some of the soldiers, encouraged to emigrate to 
Mexico by a decree of the emperor of that country, 
sought his advice he bid them remain in their homes 
and share the fate of their States. As we read his 
correspondence and hsten to the accounts of his 
conversation given by those who were closest to him, 
we hear no word of repining at " the slings and arrows 
of outrageous fortune" — no lamentations over his 
misfortunes — no complaint of the failures of his 
subordinates, or the inefficiency of the Confederate 
Government, which were jointly responsible for his 
final defeat after so many victories in the field. No, 
he resolutely turned away from the past, and set his 
face to the future. One thing absorbed his thoughts 
and his energies, the restoration and rehabilitation 
of his people, — the comfort and relief of the heroic 
men who had fought under his banner. 

Even the harsh and cruel measures of Reconstruc- 
tion scarcely draw from his lips a word of lemon- 
strance. When indicted for treason, he declared him- 
self ready to answer the charge and wrote to his 



LEE AFTER THE SURRENDER 179 

son, "We must be patient, and let them take their 
course." 

The only record of any criticism of public men is 
the following: 

"I never heard your father discuss public matters 
at all, nor did he express his opinion of public men. 
On one occasion I did hear him condemn with great 
severity the Secretary of War, Stanton. This was 
at the time Mrs. Surratt was condemned and exe- 
cuted. At another time I heard him speak harshly 
of Gen. Hunter."* Hunter was a Virginian and had 
devastated his native state with fire and sword. 
This, and the hanging of an innocent woman, were 
the only events which, even in the familiarity of 
daily intercourse were sufficient to break that reserve 
which Gen. Lee had made his constant rule. Writing 
to Gen. Early he said, "I would recommend that you 
would omit all epithets or remarks calculated to 
excite bitterness or animosity between different 
sections of the country." 

As to his own course after the surrender his son 
Capt. R. E. Lee writes, "My father had been offered 
houses, lands and money, as well as positions as 
president of business associations and chartered 
corporations." 

The incident of the English nobleman who offered 
him a country seat in England and an annuity of 
£3000 is well known. His reply was simple and 
worthy of his noble soul, "/ must abide the fortunes 

* Letter of Capt. Edmund Randolph Cooke. 



180 THE SOUL OF LEE 

and share the fate of my people. ^^ Equally character- 
istic was his answer to a proposal to head a colony 
which was to emigrate to Mexico: 

The thought of abandoning the country and all that must 
be left in it is abhorrent to my feelings, and I prefer to struggle 
for its restoration and share its fate, rather than give up all 
for lost.* 

When offered the presidency of an insurance 
company at a princely salary he excused himself 
on the ground that he knew nothing of insurance 
business; and when he was told in reply that no 
duties would be required of him — nothing was asked 
but the use of his name, his answer was that his good 
name was about all he had saved from the wreck of 
the war, and that was not for sale. To another gilt- 
edged business proposition, he made this sublime 
reply: 

I am grateful, but I have a self-imposed task which I must 
accomplish. I have led the young men of the South in battle; 
I have seen many of them die on the iield ; I shall devote my 
remaining energies to training young men to do their duty in 
life.f 

At length, however, in August, 1865, came an offer 
which he was glad to accept — the offer to become the 
president of Washington College, Lexington, Va. 
The institution, founded in 1749, had suffered many 
vicissitudes and at this epoch "had reached the 
lowest point of depression it had ever known. Its 

* Jones' Life of Lee, p. 445. 
t Quoted by his son. 



LEE AFTER THE SURRENDER 181 

buildings, library and apparatus had suffered from 
the rack and plunder of Hunter's soldiers. Its in- 
vested funds were for the time being unproductive 
and their real value most uncertain. It boasted 
four professors and forty students. It was very poor, 
indifferently equipped with buildings, and with no 
means in sight to improve its condition.* 

This was the institution which the soldier who 
had for years carried the destinies of a nation on his 
sword, and who was then and till he died the idol of 
the Southern people, was now asked to take under his 
care. It was characteristic of his lofty soul that Lee 
was not for a moment affected by the small and 
obscure position he was invited to fill, or by the pitiful 
salary the trustees were able to offer, — $1,500 per 
annum. 

Bishop Wilmer, of Louisiana, gives the following 
account of an interview with Gen. Lee when he came 
to tell him of the offer he had received : 

I named other institutions more conspicuous which would 
welcome him with ardor as their presiding head. I soon 
discovered that his mind towered above these earthly dis- 
tinctions; that in his judgment the cause gave dignity to the 
institutions, and not the wealth of its endowment or the 
renown of its scholars; that this door and not another was 
opened to him by Providence, and he only wished to be 
assured of his competency to fidfil his trust and thus to make 
his few remaining years a comfort and blessing to his suf- 
fering country. I had spoken to his human feelings; he had 
now revealed himself to me as one "whose life was hid with 

* ^ee Capt. R. E. Lee's Life of his father, p. 180. 



182 THE SOUL OF LEE 

Christ in God." My speech was no longer restrained. I con- 
gratulated him that his heart was inclined to this great cause 
and that he was spared to give to the world this august testi- 
mony to the importance of Christian education. How he 
listened to my feeble words ; how he beckoned me to his side as 
the fulness of heart found utterance; how his whole counte- 
nance glowed with animation as I spoke of the Holy Ghost 
as the great Teacher, whose presence was required to make 
education a blessing, which otherwise might be the curse of 
mankind; how feelingly he responded, how eloquently as I 
never heard him speak before — can never be effaced from 
memory; and nothing more sacred mingles with my reminis- 
cences of the dead. * 

The journey to his new field of labor occupied four 
days on horseback. With what ambition he entered 
upon his duties as president of the college may be 
gathered from one of his letters: 

Life is indeed gliding away, and I have nothing of good to 
show for mine that is past. I pray I may be spared to accom- 
plish something for the benefit of mankind and the honor of 
God. 

From September, 1865, until his death in October 
12, 1870, he filled the ofiice of president of Washing- 
ton College, and gave himself to its duties with all the 
ardor of his noble nature. It is a rare phenomenon 
to see a man of fifty-eight years take up a new pro- 
fession with the zeal of youth and attain such marked 
success as he did. He was no figurehead in the col- 
lege but its active, vital head. In spite of his age 
he entered into every detail of administration, and 

* Quoted by Capt. R. E. Lee, p. 182. 



LEE AFTER THE SURRENDER 183 

soon gave a new impetus to every department of the 
institution. He was as laborious in his exertions 
in its behalf as he had been in planning and executing 
his great campaigns. It is evident that he regarded 
his new work as a calKng from God — as a God-given 
opportunity to do a service to the young men of the 
South and to the Country. 

His first care was to develop and equip the scien- 
tific departments. Three new chairs were added, 
physics, mathematics and modern languages, "with 
a subordinate classification of correlated studies, 
which embraced engineering, astronomy and EngHsh 
philosophy." He planned also a school of com- 
merce, and a chair of apphed chemistry. Later the 
Lexington Law School was taken into the collegiate 
jurisdiction. His idea evidently was to give a 
practical direction to the education of the young 
men, in view of the peculiar needs of the young men 
of the South at that time. This did not imply, 
however, a lack of sympathy with the study of the 
classics, which he found already provided for. 

Two very fundamental changes he soon introduced. 
The studies were made elective, and the system of 
discipline was placed on the principle of appealing 
to the honor and self-respect of the students, — ban- 
ishing entirely the old method of espionage, so fruitful 
of evil in the relations between the young men and 
the faculty. "Young gentlemen, we have no printed 
rules. We have but one rule here, that every stu- 
dent be a gentleman." In both these respects Gen. 
Lee was in harmony with Thomas Jefferson, who had 



184 THE SOUL OF LEE 

established the University of Virginia in 1824 
broadly on the elective system and the honor system. 

As he had known thousands of his soldiers by name, 
so now Lee was personally acquainted with every 
student in the college, and followed their course both 
in conduct and in their studies, with a personal, 
fatherly interest. "He weekly examined the reports 
of absences and failures in recitation, and retained 
clearly in his memory the standing of each student." 
Gen. Long tells a story which illustrates this: "When 
a certain name was called. Gen. Lee remarked in 
faculty meeting, 'I am sorry to see that he has 
fallen back so far in his mathematics.' You are 
mistaken, General,' said the professor, 'he is one of 
the very best men in my class.' He only got fifty- 
four last month,' was the reply. On looking at the 
report, it was found that there had been a mistake 
in the copying, and that Gen. Lee was correct accord- 
ing to the record."* 

The same writer gives an example of Gen. Lee's 
grave satire. Upon a visitor enquiring how a certain 
student was getting on. Gen. Lee repHed, "He is a 
quiet orderly young man, but seems very careful 
not to injure the health of his father's son. He got last 
month only forty on his Greek, thirty-five on his 
mathematics, forty-seven on his Latin, and fifty on 
his English, which is a very low standing, as one 
hundred is our maximum. Now, I do not want 
our young men really to injure their health, but I 

* Long's Memoirs, p. 448. 



LEE AFTER THE SURRENDER 185 

wish them to come as near it as possible. This young 
gentleman, you see, is a long way from the danger 
Une." 

The college soon expanded from five professors and 
sixty students to twenty professors and four hundred 
students. 

So toiled on this great soul in the obscure Httle 
mountain town in Virginia those last five years of 
his life, — with the same unwearied patience, with 
the same steady concentration of his energies, and 
with the same courageous determination to conquer, as 
when he was planning campaigns and fighting great 
battles as the mighty commander of the Army of 
Northern Virginia. It never occurred to his lofty 
soul that that oversight of a small college was be- 
neath the dignity of one who had played so great a 
part on the world's stage, and who was still con- 
stantly receiving tokens of the admiration in which 
he was held by distinguished men in Europe, and of 
the love and devotion of the entire people of the 
South. He would have repudiated such a sug- 
gestion with indignation, even with astonishment. 
For he knew that he was pursuing an aim worthy 
the best endeavor of the greatest of men — to set 
before the people whom he loved a high standard of 
education, moral and spiritual as well as intellectual 
and practical— to send out from the halls of the 
college over which he presided year after year, a 
body of young men prepared to assist in building up 
the waste places of the South, and imbued with high 
principles of conduct. He knew the supreme value 



186 THE SOUL OF LEE 

of education conceived on those broad lines which 
include the culture of the soul as well as of the mind — 
that definition of education as " the Georgics of the 
mind " would have been held by him fatally defective 
— rather would he have defined it as " the Georgics 
of the whole man, body, mind and soul." — He 
knew that each of the graduates of Lexington 
would be a missionary to some Southern community 
to preach that gospel of work which he saw was so 
greatly needed, and also that gospel of loyal accept- 
ance of the results of the war, which alone could 
ultimately restore to the States of the South their 
place and their function as integral parts of the 
Union. 

To quote the beautiful tribute of Mr. Bradford, 
"What counted with all these young men was his 
personal influence, and he knew it. In point of fact 
he was creating or recreating a great nation still. 
His patience, his courage, his attitude toward the 
future, his perfect forgiveness, his large magnanimity, 
above all, his hope, were reflected in the eager hearts 
about him and from them spread wide over the 
bruised and beaten South, which stood so sorely in 
need of all these things. I have referred in an earlier 
chapter to the immense importance of his general 
influence in bringing about reconciliation and peace. 
It is almost impossible to overestimate this."* 

Undoubtedly he was during those last years 
devoting his tireless energies to restoring the unity of 
the nation. 

* Lee the American^ p. 265. 



LEE AFTER THE SURRENDER 187 

His daily life was idyllic. All classes in the little 
community loved him. Beautiful incidents are told 
illustrating the magnetism he exerted over little 
children, as when a little girl appealed to him to 
induce her younger sister to go home, saying to her 
mother afterwards "I couldn't make Fan go home, 
and I thought lie could do anything." Even the 
freed slaves always paid him every respect. 

He was always solicitous for the promotion of 
religion in the college, and warmly encouraged the 
work of the Young Men's Christian Association. 
He showed more emotion than on almost any other 
occasion in expressing his fervent wish that the 
students should all become sincere Christians. He 
was a devout member of the Episcopal Church and 
a vestryman of the church in Lexington, but he was 
no dogmatist, and his interest was chiefly in the 
practical aspect of Christianity. As one of his 
biographers remarks, "his religion had a genuine 
catholicity of character." His soul was chiefly 
intent upon the essential, the fundamental truths of 
spiritual religion. It was while attending a vestry 
meeting of his church, held in a cold, damp room 
that he contracted the cold which resulted in his 
death. 

That same disinterestedness which characterized 
his whole life was conspicuous during his last years, 
as when he declined to receive from the trustees of 
the college the gift of a handsome residence and also 
an annuity of $3000 which they proposed to settle on 
his family. 



188 THE SOUL OF LEE 

His modesty and humility were as marked as his 
disinterestedness. Asked to furnish material for his 
biography, he writes, "I know of nothing good I 
could tell you of myself, and I fear I should not like 
to say any evil." Urged in 1867 to accept the 
nomination for Governor of Virginia, he firmly de- 
clined, believing it would be, in the state of public 
feeling in the nation, harmful to the interests of Vir- 
ginia, adding, "If my disfranchisement and privation 
of civil rights would secure to the citizens of the State 
the enjoyment of civil liberty and equal rights under 
the Constitution, I would willingly accept them in 
their stead." 

We have said that Gen. Lee's life in Lexington was 
idyllic. So it was externally, in the quiet and repose 
which he enjoyed, in the love and reverence that 
surrounded him as an atmosphere wherever he went, 
in the constant expressions of admiration and appre- 
ciation which came to him from many sources. 
But underneath all this, — unseen to men, there was a 
tragedy; his noble soul was agonizing under the 
burden of the sorrows and sufferings and humilia- 
tions of the Southern people. These pressed sorely 
upon him, a true crown of thorns, borne silently and 
uncomplainingly. Sometimes, however, the pain that 
he carried in secret for his people, found momentary 
expression, as when he wrote to his son, December 21, 
1867. 

"When !• saw the cheerfulness with which the 
people were working to restore their condition, and 
witnessed the comforts with which they were sur- 



LEE AFTER THE SURRENDER 189 

rounded, a load of sorrow which had been pressing 
upon me for years was lifted from my heart. " 

The death of Gen. Lee was attributed by his phy- 
sicians to moral causes. Though his serene soul 
gave no sign of the burden that was breaking down his 
physical strength, it was clear to those near to him 
that such was the fact. The end has been thus 
described by Col. Wm. Preston Johnston: 

As the old hero lay in the darkened room, or with the lamp 
and hearth fire casting shadows upon his calm noble front, 
all the massive grandeur of his form and face and brow re- 
mained, and death seemed to lose its terrors and to borrow a 
grace and dignity in sublime keeping with the life that was 
ebbing away. The great mind sank to its last repose almost 
with the equal poise of health. 

For the last forty-eight hours he remained im- 
conscious, but out of the penumbra that enveloped 
his faculties came two significant words, "Tell Hill 
he must come up!" and then, as if the great soldier 
felt he must move to a heavenly camping groimd, 
''Strike the tent!" 

So calmly, and with the dignity that was charac- 
teristic of the man, closed the career of the greatest 
American of the nineteenth century, of whom Free- 
man, the historian, said he was worthy a niche in the 
temple of fame with Alfred the Great and Washing- 
ton. Men may continue to say in their short- 
sightedness that his Hfe was a failure. Weighed in 
the scales of moral achievement, it is seen to have 
been grandly successful. He and his gallant com- 
patriots did not fail to make such a protest against 



190 THE SOUL OF LEE 

the aggressions of power upon the province of liberty 
as has filled the world with its echo. They did not 
fail in successfully arraigning by the potent voice of 
their superb valor and their all-sacrificing patriotism 
the usurpation of powers which by the Constitution 
were distributed to the States. We must remember 
that the dissolution of the Union was not what Lee 
and his men had chiefly at heart. Nor was the 
estabHshment of the Southern Confederacy their 
supreme and ultimate aim. Both the one and the 
other were secondary to the preservation of the sacred 
right of self-government. And we make bold to 
predict that the future historian will judge that 
while the armies of the North saved the Union from 
dissolution, Lee and the armies of the South saved the 
rights of the States within the Union. 

But whether or not this prediction shall be justified 
by the event, this certainly no man can call in ques- 
tion: Though Lee did not succeed in conquering for 
the Confederate States a place among the nations of 
Christendom, yet he did, without seeking it, conquer 
for himself a place in the hearts of five millions of his 
countrymen in the South; he also conquered the 
admiration and esteem of a great company of high- 
minded men in the North, who had no sympathy 
whatever with the Southern Confederacy; and he 
so hved and fought and labored and died that the 
nations of the world have set him upon a pinnacle 
of fame whence envy and detraction can never cast 
him down. 

Is it any wonder that his soldiers and his country- 



LEE AFTER THE SURRENDER 191 

men boldly challenge the world to produce from the 
annals of time another supreme soldier who was also 
such a supreme examplar of Christian virtue, of 
spotless manhood, of high chivalry, of unselfish 
devotion to duty, as the commander of the Army of 
Northern Virginia? Few among the great captains of 
history have surpassed or even equaled his achieve- 
ments in the field of war; but is there one among 
them all that can compare with this hero of the 
Southern Confederacy in purity of Hfe, in steadfast 
lifelong devotion to a high ideal, in modest self- 
effacement, in freedom from selfish ambition, in 
sublime patience under adversity, in moderation in 
victory, in composure in defeat, in ChristHke re- 
signation? 

As we range in thought through the ages of re- 
corded history and compare Lee with the great 
soldiers of the world, — Alexander, Hannibal, Caesar, 
Henry V, Richard Coeur de Lion, Cromwell, Marl- 
borough, Turenne, Frederick the Great, Wellington, 
Napoleon, Washington — if in miHtary genius he may 
be judged of lesser stature than some of them, — some 
few of them — none of English blood, — yet how plainly 
he towers above them all in the virtues of pure man- 
hood — Washington alone excepted! 

Indeed where shall we find in history the philos- 
opher, or the statesman, or the master of men that 
reaches the high plane of moral subhmity on which 
stands this modest Virginia soldier? Not Socrates, 
or Seneca, or Cato, or Pericles, or Marcus AureHus; 
not Cromwell, or Pitt, or Fox, or Chatham, or Nelson, 



192 THE SOUL OF LEE 

or Jefferson, or Marshall, or Bismarck, or Moltke, 
or Cavour. 

Marcus AureKus, the stoic emperor, was a pessi- 
mist and a persecutor; Cato took his own life; 
even Socrates had his blemishes; Marlborough had a 
sordid love of money; Frederick the Great was a 
misanthrope and a pessimist; the habits of Pitt and 
Fox and Nelson were deplorable; Bismarck was a 
new Machiavelli, — we pass the others by. But of 
Lee no act of littleness, or selfishness, or self-seeking 
ambition is recorded, though he was no bloodless 
Cromwell but a man with a fiery soul. 

His mortal remains sleep in the chapel of Wash- 
ington and Lee University, where a Virginian artist 
has carved in pure marble an impressive effigy of the 
sleeping warrior. But if, as Pericles declared in one 
of his greatest orations, ^^The whole earth is the sepul- 
chre of illustrious men" then the earth itself is his 
sepulchre, and through the ages to come the suc- 
ceeding generations of mankind will continue to 
honor his memory. 

Speak, History! Who are life's victors? 

Unroll thy long annals and say — 

Are they those whom the world called 

The Victors — who won the success of a day? 

The martyrs, or Nero? The Spartans 

Who fell at Thermopylae's tryst. 

Or the Persians and Xerxes? His judges, 

Or Socrates? 



XII 
LEE'S SPIRITUAL LIFE 



^^ Lee had one intimate friend — God.^^ — Gamaliel 
Bradford. 

"A book (the Bible) in comparison with which all 
others in my eyes are of minor importance, and which 
in all my perplexities has never failed to give me light 
and strength.'' — Robert E. Lee. 

''It is an advantage to have a subject like Lee that 
one cannot help loving. . . . I have loved him, and I may 
say that his influence upon my own life, though I 
came to him late, has been as deep and as inspiring as 
any I have ever known.'' — Gamaliel Bradford. 

'* From the bottom of my heart I thank Heaven for 
the comfort of having a character like Lee's to look at, 
standing in burnished glory above the smoke of Mam- 
mon's altars." — Morris S chaff. 



XII 

LEE'S SPIRITUAL LIFE 

We turn now from the story of Lee the great sol- 
dier, to the record of Lee the Christian man — from his 
public hfe to his spiritual life. 

Undoubtedly the truest test of any man's Chris- 
tian character is to be found in his home. "Is so 
and so a Christian?" some one asked of Whitfield. 
"How can I tell?" was the answer, "I never lived with 
him." 

Lee's domestic hfe was not only beautiful, it was 
permeated with the unmistakable evidences of simple, 
unaffected piety. Whoever will read the charming 
volume given to the world by Ms son Capt. Robert 
Lee, Recollections and Letters of Gen. Robert E. Lee, 
will find a truly ideal picture of domestic happiness. 
The letters it gives us vibrate with his passionate love 
for his children and his deep and constant solicitude 
for their moral and spiritual welfare. He writes 
to one of his sons, "When I think of your youth, 
impulsiveness and many temptations, your dis- 
tance from me, and the ease (and even innocence) 
with which you might commence an erroneous 
course, my heart quails within me, and my whole 
frame and being trembles at the possible result. May 
Almighty God have you in his holy keeping!" 

This correspondence abounds in incidental refer- 
195 



196 THE SOUL OF LEE 

ences which reflect his Christian faith. Naturally, 
without effort, without obtrusiveness or ostentation, 
his never-faihng trust in God and submission to his will 
shines out in his intimate letters to the members of 
his family. Neither victory or defeat deflects his 
soul from its constant look upward to the Almighty 
disposer of events. While at Hagerstown, July 12, 
1865, after the tremendous battle of Gettysburg, 
while confronted by Meade's great army in front and 
a swollen river behind him barring his retreat; and 
when disaster such as befell Napoleon at Beresina or 
Leipzig might have been feared, he writes a long letter 
to his wife about some family matters, and then refers 
to the situation of his army with its "communica- 
tions interrupted and almost cut off," and adds, "I 
trust that a merciful God, our only hope and refuge, 
will not desert us in this hour of need, and will deHver 
us by His almighty hand that the whole world may 
recognize His power and all hearts be lifted up in 
adoration and praise of His unbounded loving kind- 
ness. We must, however, submit to His almighty 
will, whatever that may be. May God guide and 
protect us all is my constant prayer!" 

When, after the surrender, Gen. Lee received 
through the Hon. Beresford Hope a handsome copy 
of the Bible from some Enghsh admirers, he wrote a 
letter of acknowledgment in which he refers to the 
Bible as "a book in comparison with which all others 
in my eyes are of minor importance, and which in 
all my perplexities has never failed to give me light 
and strength." 



LEE'S SPIRITUAL LIFE 197 

But Lee was not only a sincere and devout Chris- 
tian, he was in the truest sense a Christian hero. 
He has a place of right in that noble army of the 
soldiers of Jesus Christ, who have done heroic ser- 
vice for God and man in their lives. And his right 
to such a place rests not upon any of his achieve- 
ments done before the eyes of men, but rather to that 
spirit of self-renunciation, so often exhibited in his 
career whereby he turned away from honor and place 
and ease, and cast in his lot with his people in danger, 
in trial, in adversity. 

We have seen how in the great crisis of his career 
when the supreme command of the Armies of the 
United States was tendered him, he declined the 
offer, although it must have presented a great temp- 
tation to him as a soldier. He loved the Union; if 
he had owned all the slaves in the South, he would 
gladly have given them all up to save the Union; 
he ''recognized no necessity" for secession; he 
would have "forborne and pleaded to the end for 
redress of grievances, real or supposed"; he had a 
deep feeling "of loyalty and duty as an American 
citizen"; he was strongly attached to the Service to 
which he had devoted the best years of his life, and 
all the ability he possessed. 

How strong then were the motives leading him to 
accept the brilliant ofifer! What a career it opened 
up to him! He knew the weakness of the South — 
he knew also the power and resources of the North — 
and knowing them, the ultimate victory of the North 
in the impending struggle must have seemed and at 



198 THE SOUL OF LEE 

that time did seem to him certain. Thus Victory — 
Power — Fame — Ambition — all lured him on and 
urged acceptance, but in vain. No selfish consid- 
eration could move him. No ambition could dis- 
turb his equilibrium. No promise of glory or pro- 
motion could swerve him from the path of duty as 
he saw it. 

DeHberately he chose the weaker side — the side he 
foresaw would be defeated — the side which must 
bring him self-denial and loss and suffering and 
humiliation and failure. He would suffer with his 
people. Their lot should be his lot. If they failed, 
he would fail with them. If they sank to the earth 
in disaster, he would share their fate. 

Turn we now to another example of Lee's self- 
renunciation. The impossible had happened; Lee 
had surrendered; his glorious battle flag was furled 
forever. The war was over. 

What now should be the course of this man who 
had given all his genius, and all his marvellous energy 
to estabHsh the Confederacy — and given it in vain? 
Doors of ease and comfort and honor opened to him 
across the sea. Should he accept them? Why not? 
Had he not done all that mortal man could do for the 
Southern people? Had he not sacrificed all he 
was, and all he possessed, on their behalf? Then 
why not leave the scene of his defeat and his losses, 
and rest in peace and quietness in Old England, 
where he was admired and revered almost as much 
as in the South itself? 

No, — a thousand times no! Lee would not for- 



LEE'S SPIRITUAL LIFE 199 

sake his people in their dire calamity. If he could do 
no more for them, at least he could do this — he could 
suffer with them. And so again a great renunciation 
is made. This hero of faith turned away from a life 
of ease and chose a life of toil. He refused honor 
and accepted reproach. He turned his back on the 
luxurious homes offered him beyond the seas, and 
chose rather to suffer affliction with his people — in 
their poverty, in their disfranchisements, in all their 
dire calamities! He would share their sorrows. He 
would bear their burdens with them. They were his 
people still, and he would put his neck under the yoke 
imposed upon them — however grievous it might be. 

But if he was to remain in the South, might he not 
accept some easy, lucrative post, with only nominal 
duties — and thus far at least consult his ease? You 
know that offers of such places were freely made him. 
Let him allow himself, for example, to be chosen a 
president of a great business enterprise with a 
princely salary and practically nothing to do. But 
again No! This royal soul turned resolutely away 
from all such offers. Once more the spirit of self- 
renunciation triumphed, and Lee chose a hfe of toil, 
and care, and self-denial. He accepted the pres- 
idency of Washington College in its day of small 
things when it was wrecked and almost ruined by the 
cruel hoof of war, at a salary which was, in fact, a 
mere pittance, and gave himself to the task of edu- 
cating the young men of the South in a little moun- 
tain town, far from the haunts of men and the stir 
and clamor of the busy world. 



200 THE SOUL OF LEE 

Why? Because he loved his people. Because he 
saw that the education of their young men was the 
first and most pressing task of those trying times. 
Because he believed in the gospel of work, and would 
set an example to the Southern people to go to work 
with all their might to rebuild their shattered for- 
tunes. 

In all this we see the embodiment of the deepest 
principle of the religion of Jesus Christ. Christ, 
says the Apostle, ^^died for all, that they which live 
should not henceforth live unto themselves. ''^ It may 
be said of Robert E. Lee that not only in the great 
crisis of his Ufe was the spirit of renunciation supreme, 
but that all through his Hfe, from the day when he 
publicly gave himself to the service of God in old 
Christ Church, Alexandria, he lived not to himself 
but to God and his fellow men. 

We do not think we are mistaken when we say that 
this Christ-Uke spirit of self-forgetfulness and self- 
sacrifice contributed even more than his military 
genius to the greatness of Gen. Lee. It is this wliich 
gives so pure a lustre to his fame. We do not fear 
to say that neither William of Orange, nor Gustavus 
Adolphus, approach the height of moral grandeur 
that Lee attained, and for the reason that the lives 
of neither of them incarnated to the same extent as 
his did, the spirit of self-sacrifice. This virtue it 
was, which, superadded to his military genius, and 
his fortitude, and his intrepidity, and his heroic 
constancy, made him worthy a place in the temple 
of fame beside Alfred the Great. Without this, how- 



LEE'S SPIRITUAL LIFE 201 

ever admired and trusted he might have been by his 
soldiers, he would not have been loved as he was by 
every man in that incomparable Army of Northern 
Virginia. • 

Nor is this all. Great as Lee was in the eyes of the 
world at the close of the war, in spite of the fact that 
he had failed to estabhsh the Confederacy, we affirm 
that his greatness shone with a far greater lustre 
when, five years later, his life came to its close. 

The world would never have known the full stature 
of Lee's greatness, if he had succeeded in his Titanic 
task of establishing the Southern Confederacy. It 
was in defeat, and trial, and toil, and reproach, that 
his greatness stood revealed in its true proportions. 
If he was great in action, he was greater in suffering. 
If he was majestic as he led his legions to victory in 
so many bloody fields of battle, he was yet more 
majestic when he led his defeated and impoverished 
people in the path of submission to the will of God 
and obedience to the laws of the United States, — 
harsh and unjust as all men now acknowledge that 
they were. He had been their idolized leader in 
war, — he was still their leader in time of peace, — 
or rather in that new conflict now precipitated upon 
the Southern people (so much more bitter than flagrant 
war) in which patience and forbearance and self- 
control were the weapons to be employed. As he 
had given himself without stint to the soldiers in the 
camp and on the field of carnage, so now he gave him- 
self without reserve with all his powers to his people 
in meeting the hard conditions of their lot, in bearing 



202 THE SOUL OF LEE 

the bitter yoke of those cruel years of what was falsely 
called ' ' Reconstruction . ' ' 

His sublime task now was to "reconcile his people 
to the consequences of defeat, to inspire them with 
hope, to lead them to accept freely and frankly the 
government that had been established by the result 
of the war, and thus relieve them from military 
rule." Nobly he addressed himself to the task, 
and nobly his people responded. In this great 
emprise Lee did not fail, and the future historian 
will recognize the services he rendered the South 
those last five years of his life as the greatest he ever 
rendered. 

It was not only that his sublime example taught 
them patience and fortitude under calamity and 
injustice, and self-restraint under bitter provocation; 
but he inspired them with the resolve to put away 
repining at "the slings and arrows of outrageous 
fortune," and go to work with courage and deter- 
mination to build up the waste places of the South. 
Lee preached "the gospel of work" as well as "the 
gospel of Reconciliation." His life and example 
were the real forces that made for Reconstruction 
and the Restoration of the Union. 

And if today the South is strong and prosperous 
and rich, holding her place in the Union by as firm 
a tenure as the North, it is due, more than to any 
other one influence, to the compelling power of the 
life and example of Robert E. Lee from 1865 to 1870, 
informed as they were, always and everywhere, by 
the Christ-Hke spirit of self-sacrifice. 



LEE'S SPIRITUAL LIFE 203 

But greater than this pubhc service to his people 
was the influence of his example as a sincere and un- 
affected Christian. 

The light of his faith and of his consistent Christian 
Hfe shone like a beacon on the mountain top all over 
the land. 

He had always led a pure and blameless life. The 
searchhght of investigation reveals no moral crisis 
in his career, as was the case with Stonewall Jackson 
when he turned from a life of sin and self-indulgence 
to a Hfe of righteousness; no moment when it could 
be said of him as of the hero of Agincourt, 

Consideration like an angel came, 

And whipp'd the offending Adam out of him. 

No, from the day when a boy of eleven he became his 
widowed mother's mainstay in the home in Alex- 
andria, Robert E. Lee appears to have led a life with- 
out spot, or stain, or flaw. But Lee knew himself too 
well, and had too just an appreciation of the standard 
by which man must be judged by his Maker, to 
build his spiritual confidence on the purity of his 
life or the strictness of his morality. In his four 
years at the Military Academy at West Point he 
never received a demerit or a reprimand, and so 
nearly faultless was his career that we may point to 
him as a model and exemplar to all the ages of man. 
But Lee saw too clearly into his own heart, and 
knew too well the strictness of God's Law, to place 
his hope and his confidence in his own righteousness. 
No, he felt his weakness, he reaUzed his unworthiness, 



204 THE SOUL OF LEE 

and he put his trust — his whole trust — for eternal 
salvation in the merits of his Redeemer. Some time 
in the year 1863, when told of the prayers that were 
offered for him at the religious services in the different 
camps, he said with emotion, "I sincerely thank you 
for that, and I can only say that I am a poor sinner, 
trusting in Christ alone, and that I need all the 
prayers you can offer for me." 

May we be permitted to say that this evangelical 
faith of Robert Lee — this meek and lowly trust in 
Jesus Christ and Him crucified — is the key to his 
character. He was not a second Marcus Aurelius — 
the noble stoic, the sad-hearted royal philosopher. 
No, he was a Christian — a Christian optimist. If 
ever a pessimistic view of hfe might have been 
excused, it was to a man situated as Lee was at the 
close of the war. But no, he was always hopeful. 
When evil or misfortune came he was wont to say 
"it will eventuate in some good that we know not of 
now." And again, "Some good is always mixed with 
evil in the world." He believed, as the poet says: 

There is some soul of goodness in things evil 
Would men observingly distil it out. 

That was his strong anchor in the stormy days of 
"Reconstruction," when the whole horizon was black 
with trouble. 

To the fortitude of the stoic he added the hopeful 
faith of the Christian: "We cannot help it," he 
wrote in a time of afSiction, "and we must endure it." 
"We must exert all our patience, and in His own good 



LEE'S SPIRITUAL LIFE 205 

time God will relieve us, and make all things work 
together for good, if we give Him our love and place 
in Him our trust." 

Throughout his campaigns he ever expressed, in 
his confidential correspondence with the members 
of his family, his unfailing trust in the providence of 
God. And in the hour of victory he gave God all the 
glory: 

Being free from vainness and self -glorious pride, 
Giving full trophy, signal and ostent, 
Quite from himself to God. 

That correspondence reveals him as a man who lived 
in the presence of God; who looked to God con- 
tinually for guidance and strength; whose mind and 
heart were saturated with faith and trust in God. 
We see him a man of prayer in the midst of his cam- 
paigns, "My supplications continually ascend for 
you, my children and my country." Referring to 
a gallant soldier very dear to him, he utters the 
aspiration that "God would cover him with His 
Almighty Arm, and teach him that his only refuge is 
in Him, the greatness of whose mercy reacheth into 
the heavens, and His truth unto the clouds." 

That correspondence brings out also most clearly 
that this indomitable soldier, "the terrible Lee," was 
at heart a man of peace. War, of which he was so 
supreme a master, was to him abhorrent, only pos- 
sible as a dire necessity, in defense of home and fire- 
side. After his great victory over Burnside at 
Fredericksburg, we find (see his letters) no trace of 



206 THE SOUL OF LEE 

exultation over his triumph, but only such utter- 
ances as these, "What a cruel thing war is — to fill 
our hearts with hatred instead of love for our neigh- 
bors, and to devastate the fair face of this beautiful 
world!" 

It is characteristic also that to the eye of this great 
captain ''the sublimest sight of war" was not the 
column of dauntless men charging, as Pickett's 
Division charged of Gettysburg, but "the cheerful- 
ness and alacrity" of his shivering, barefooted sol- 
diers "in pursuit of the enemy under all the trials and 
privations to which they were exposed." 

I do not know in all history a finer example of the 
broad distinction that exists between the virtues of 
the stoic and those of the Christian than is afforded 
by the life and character of Lee. 

Take for example two characteristics which were 
strongly marked in him, especially in his later Ufe, 
I mean his humility and his forgiveness of injuries. 
These would not have been considered virtues at 
all by the stoic, but they hold a prominent place in 
the category of Christian virtues. 

What a supreme evidence it was of the grace of 
God that such a man as Gen. Lee should have achieved 
the grace of humility. The man whom Gen. Lord 
Viscount Wolseley describes as the most kingly man 
he ever saw — the man of whom Stonewall Jackson 
said, "Lee is a phenomenon. He is the only man 
I would follow blindfold" — this man was "clothed 
with humility." Yes the modesty which distin- 
guished him from boyhood ripened in his later years 



LEE'S SPIRITUAL LIFE 207 

into a genuine Christian humility, as beautiful as it is 
rare. Under any circumstances this grace is difficult 
of attainment, and is attained, it is to be feared, by 
very few. But for one possessing such shining qual- 
ities of mind and person — distinguished and honored 
through his whole Ufe — in the latter part of his career 
occupying the very pinnacle of fame, and (what was 
far more glorious) reigning still in the hearts of his 
people when defeat and failure had overtaken him, 
when his banner was furled, and his sword sheathed 
forever — for such a man to be clothed with humility 
would seem a marvel, and that he was so, shows how 
mightily the grace of God had wrought within him. 
Equally wonderful is it to note his meek and quiet 
endurance of misrepresentation, his refusal to exon- 
erate himself, though justly, at the expense of others. 
And then see how this king of men put in practice 
the precept of Jesus Christ, "I say unto you, love 
your enemies, bless them that curse you, . . . and pray 
for them which despitefully use you and persecute 
you." Of this I give a single illustration. Not 
long after the surrender the government decided 
that Lee should be indicted for treason in the U. S. 
Court, and a gentleman in Richmond was requested 
to communicate the fact to him. In doing so, the 
gentleman expressed his indignation, whereupon 
Gen. Lee rose, and taking his hand said with a gra- 
cious smile, "We must forgive our enemies," and 
then added, '*I can truly say that not a day has 
passed since the war began that I have not prayed 
for them." 



208 THE SOUL OF LEE 

And now we wish to invite attention to a fact of 
deep interest in the study of this great man's char- 
acter. It is this: Parallel with the unfolding of his 
greatness as a mihtary leader, as a commander of 
armies, as a devoted patriot, as a model of all manly 
virtues, proceeded also the unfolding of his piety. 
As in the other aspects of his character, so in its 
religious aspect also, there was "a shining more and 
more unto the perfect day." 

What is the inference, the necessary inference to 
be drawn therefrom? It is this: The secret of his 
transcendent greatness is to be found in the fact (to 
use the language of Jefferson Davis) that "this good 
citizen, this gallant soldier, this great general, this 
true patriot, had yet a higher praise than this, or 
these, — he was a true Christian J^ 

We can frame no satisfactory philosophy of his hfe 
except on the principle thus happily enunciated by 
his illustrious friend. The last ten years of his life 
are crowded with instances of sublime self-abnegation, 
patience, meekness, humility, resignation. Whence, 
we ask, had this man these things? Whence did he 
draw the inspiration for such grand moral victories? 
Came it from earth or from Heaven? from man or 
from God? from philospohy or from religion? 

There can be but one answer. These traits of 
character — contempt of glory, meekness under in- 
juries, forgiveness of enemies, — are not inculcated by 
human philosophy, are not recognized in "the code 
of honor among gentlemen," are even repudiated as 



LEE'S SPIRITUAL LIFE 209 

mean and unmanly by the world; while on the other 
hand they are inculcated by the Religion of Jesus 
Christ (which Lee professed) and by that only. 
Can there then be any other inference save that 
Christianity supplied the unseen but mighty power 
which lifted Lee in the sphere of moral greatness 
so far above most of the great captains of history; 
that he drew the inspiration for these his greatest 
achievements from Heaven, not from Earth; that 
it was divine grace and not nature that made 
his hfe so sublime? He has been called by one 
of his eulogists "the man who has strengthened 
our faith in our race by the lofty height to which 
his own great nature so easily bore him." Such 
an estimate must be pronounced radically wrong; 
it is based on a philosophy which utterly fails 
to account for the phenomena of his Hfe. From 
this point of view his character would remain an 
insoluble enigma. We may say also that it is one 
which he himself would have utterly repudiated. 
His whole demeanor and conversation declared that 
he did not ascribe his virtues to "his own great 
nature" but to divine grace. "By the grace of 
God, I am what I am," is the language of his hfe. 

A far higher, and a juster, encomium than the one 
just quoted, would be to say of him: 

"Gen. Lee was a man who strengthened the faith 
of mankind in the rehgion of Jesus Christ by the 
subhme heights to which Divine Grace so easily 
bore him." 



210 THE SOUL OF LEE 

This, in our judgment, was the greatest, though not 
the most conspicuous, service that Lee rendered 
his people. 

Men will continue to differ peradventure for gen- 
erations, in their estimate of his career in its public 
and political aspect, but there is today a truly- 
remarkable unanimity in the sentiments entertained 
by his countrymen, both North and South, concerning 
the personal character and the Christian virtues of 
this heroic man. 

His sword was sheathed at Appomattox in de- 
feat, — the Confederacy which he had sustained by 
his genius and his heroic constancy, fell with him to 
rise no more — his battle flag was furled that day for- 
ever. From that hour it was a conquered banner, and 
he a conquered chieftain. 

But today he who was conquered at Appomattox 
stands forth a conqueror, crowned with laurels as un- 
tarnished as ever decked the brow of man. He has 
conquered the hearts of the American people. Their 
respect and admiration are his. North and South 
united the other day on the field of Gettysburg in 
paying admiring tribute to his memory. 

The sign of the Cross was upon his life — espe- 
cially upon all that epoch of lowly and inconspicuous 
labor for the young men of the South, as president of 
Washington College. He bore on his heart the bur- 
dens and the sorrows of his people, and inspired them 
by his example to patience and constancy in bearing 
the heavy cross the cruel times had laid upon their 
shoulders. He bade them remember in their darkest 



LEE'S SPIRITUAL LIFE 211 

hour that "human virtue should be equal to human 
calamity," and this noble sentiment he illustrated 
in his daily life under the pressure of trials and 
anxieties that entered like iron into his soul, till at 
last his mighty heart was broken by the burden, 
and as he had Hved, so he died for his people. 



APPENDIX 



The Gettysburg Campaign 

Parts of an Article in the " Southern Historical Society Papers,' 
January, igi5 



I. Preliminary Strategy 

On the 1 2th of June, 1863, Gen. Joe Hooker with 
his great host of 130,000 men, lay encamped on the 
Stafford Heights, on the Rappahannock River, oppo- 
site Fredericksburg, within sixty miles of the Capital 
of the Southern Confederacy. 

Two weeks later this splendid army under its gal- 
lant leader is on Pennsylvania soil marching north 
to intercept Lee's army, which is moving on Harrison- 
burg on the Susquehanna River. 

Richmond has been reheved: scarcely a Federal 
soldier remains upon the soil of Virginia; and the 
burden of war has been transferred from that battle- 
worn State to the shoulders of the State of Pennsyl- 
vania. 

It is Washington now, not Richmond, which is 
threatened! Here surely is a great military achieve- 
ment — and it has been accompHshed without fight- 
ing a pitched battle, in fact, with insignificant loss 
to the forces of the Confederate chieftain. 

215 



216 THE SOUL OF LEE 

In studying the Gettysburg campaign I ask you to 
note this splendid result of Lee's masterful strategy — 
the great army of Gen. Hooker drawn a hundred and 
thirty miles north, clear out of Virginia and across 
the State of Maryland into Pennsylvania, — by the 
sheer force of strategy. 

Observe then that in the primary purpose of this 
campaign, the relief of Virginia from the presence of 
war, Lee was successful. 

I cannot proceed to the story of the battle itself 
without calling your attention to an important feature 
of Lee's plan of campaign which is apt to be over- 
looked. I mean his purpose that Gen. Beauregard 
should be ordered to Culpeper Courthouse, Va., in 
order to threaten Washington while Gen. Lee him- 
self was marching into Pennsylvania. He believed 
that an army at that point "even in effigy," as he 
expressed it, under so famous a leader, would have 
the effect of retaining a large force for the defence of 
the capital, and diminishing by so much the strength 
of the army which would oppose him in Pennsylvania. 
The government at Richmond, however, was un- 
wilUng, or felt itself unable, to carry out this part of 
Lee's plan, though we now know there were certain 
brigades which were available for the purpose. 

We touch here a fact of moment in forming an 
estimate of the military capacity of Gen. Lee: I 
mean that he was never in supreme command of the 
Confederate armies until a few weeks before the close 
of the war, when it was too late. Field Marshal 
Lord Wolseley remarks that for this reason we can 



APPENDIX 217 

never accurately estimate the full measure of Lee's 
military genius. 

II. The Invasion of Pennsylvania — Movement 
OF THE Cavalry 

I come now to consider the second stage of the 
Gettysburg campaign, the actual invasion of Penn- 
sylvania. ' 

Seldom has an army entered upon a campaign under 
more hopeful auspices. The victories of Fredericksburg, 
December, 1862, and of Chancellorsville the following 
May, had inspired the Army of Northern Virginia 
with confidence in itself and with renewed faith in the 
genius of its great commander. It had been strength- 
ened by the return of the two divisions of Long- 
street's corps. It had been skilfully reorganized. 
In a word, it was the finest army Lee had ever com- 
manded, although not the largest; better equipped 
and armed than ever before; thoroughly discipHned, 
The organization of the Confederate artillery has 
been pronounced by distinguished Federal authori- 
ties "almost ideal"; although it was far inferior in 
number of pieces and weight of metal to the artillery 
of the Union Army. Col. Fiebeger, Professor of 
Engineering at the U. S. MiHtary Academy, says: 
"If the differences of the two armies are fairly weighed, 
the chances of success in the campaign about to be 
opened, were in favor of Gen. Lee, notwithstanding 
his numerical inferiority." Gen. Long, of Gen. Lee's 
staff, says : "The Army of Northern Virginia appeared 



218 THE SOUL OF LEE 

the best disciplined, the most high-spirited and most 
enthusiastic army on the continent. The successful 
campaign which this army had recently passed 
through, inspired it with almost invincible ardor." 

Again, he says: "Everything seemed to promise 
success and the joyful animation with which the men 
marched north after the movement actually began, 
and the destination of the army was communicated 
to them, appeared a true presage of victory." 

Gen. Lee himself said: "Never was there such an 
army; it will go anywhere and do anything if properly 
led." Upon which Chas. Francis Adams remarks: 
"This is not an exaggerated statement. I do not 
beheve any more formidable or better organized force 
was ever set in motion than that which Lee led 
across the Potomac in 1863. It was essentially an 
army of fighters, and could be depended upon for any 
feat of arms in the power of mere mortals to accom- 
plish; they would blench at no danger," 

Nevertheless, in spite of these favorable auspices 
the campaign did not achieve victory. Why then 
did it fail? If any experienced soldier had been able 
to look down from a balloon, or an aeroplane, upon 
the advancing columns of Lee's army after they had 
crossed the Potomac, and were moving northward 
toward the Susquehanna, the reason of the ultimate 
failure of the campaign would at once have sug- 
gested itself. He would have said, — "where is the 
cavalry that should be marching on the right flank of 
the army?" And had he, a few days later, turned 
his eyes eastward and seen Stuart with his 5000 horse- 



APPENDIX 219 

men marching through Maryland on the right flank 
of the Federal Army, entirely severed from communi- 
cation with the Confederate Army, he could not but 
have been greatly astonished. 

Lee's campaign in the opinion of the best European 
and American critics suffered from a fundamental 
error — the absence of the larger part of his cavalry 
with their skilful and intrepid leader, Gen. J. E. B. 
Stuart. 

Major Steele, in his American Campaigns, says 
(p. 362): "Never did Lee so much need 'the eyes of 
his army' that were now wandering on a fool's 
errand. Without his cavalry, his army was groping 
in the dark; he was in the enemy's country and could 
get no information from the people. He did not 
know where Meade's army was. All he could do 
was to concentrate his forces and be ready for a 
blow on either side." 

Gen. Lee's own opinion on the subject is recorded by 
Gen. Long in his Memoirs (p. 275): "Gen. Lee now 
exhibited a degree of anxiety and impatience, and 
expressed regret at the absence of his cavalry. He 
said that he had been kept in the dark ever since 
crossing the Potomac, and intimated that Stuart's 
disappearance had materially hampered the move- 
ment, and disorganized the campaign." 

Here then we have a sufficient reason for the failure 
of the Gettysburg campaign which had begun so 
auspiciously: The major pari of Lee's cavalry did him 
no service whatever during the first week of the invasion. 

But why was it absent? Was Gen. Lee ignorant 



220 THE SOUL OF LEE 

of the importance of using his cavalry in screening 
his front, in reconnoitering, and securing information 
of the movements of the enemy? Such a supposition 
is absurd. On the other hand, knowing, and reahzing 
as he must have done, the great importance of this 
use of his cavahy, did he fail to give his chief of cav- 
alry the necessary orders to fulfil this function? 

In other words, was Gen. Lee responsible for this 
fundamental mistake in his campaign? was it his 
intention to be separated from the bulk of his cavalry 
in his advance into Pennsylvania? To answer this 
question I direct your attention to the instructions 
given by Gen. Lee to Gen. Stuart. He wrote Gen. 
Ewell that he had instructed Gen. Stuart to "march 
with three brigades across the Potomac and place 
himself on your right and in communication with you ; 
keep you advised of the movements of the enemy and 
assist in collecting suppHes for the army." To Gen. 
Stuart himself Gen. Lee wrote, June 22: "You can 
move with the other three brigades into Maryland 
and take position on Ewell's right (Ewell was to 
march northward June 23d), place yourself in com- 
munication with him, guard his flank, keep him in- 
formed of the enemy's movements, and collect all 
the supplies you can for the use of the army. One 
column of Ewell's army will probably move towards 
the Susquehanna by the Emmitsburg route, another 
by Chambersburg." 

This order was repeated in a letter to Gen. Stuart 
dated June 23d. 



APPENDIX 221 



III. Movements of the Infantry * 

I turn now to the movements of the infantry of 
Lee's army. Ewell's corps moved northward from 
Hagerstown on the 23d of June, taking up the line of 
march for Chambersburg, and Carlisle, with Harris- 
burg as its objective. It reached Carlisle June 27 th. 
Hill's corps crossed the Potomac on the 24th of June, 
and marched through Hagerstown and Chambers- 
burg to FayetteviDe, where it arrived June 27 th. 
Longstreet crossed the Potomac on the 25th and 26th 
of June, and reached Chambersburg on the 27 th. 

Here let me call attention to Gen. Lee's Order No. 
73, in which he charged his soldiers not to molest 
private property. "The duties exacted of us," 

* Misfortunes due to absence of cavalry: 

1. Failure to occupy Gettysburg. — {Henderson.) 

2. Battle of first day and compulsion to fight an offensive 
battle the second. 

3. Failure to pursue and destroy defeated enemy. 

4. Flank march not feasible July 2d. — {Henderson.) 

5. Had Lee known true situation of Union Army July ist, 
Col. Fiebeger says he could have destroyed the 2d Federal 
Corps. — {Gettysburg, pp. 132-133). 

(The Union army was under orders to move towards York, 
A.M., June 29th.) 

Decisive victory possible for Lee had the cavalry done its 
part in ascertaming the position of the enemy. — {Id.) 

The failure of Confederates to profit by their advantages, 
July ist, was due to a single cause — defective information, 
due to the absence of the cavalry. — {Id., p. 134.) 



222 THE SOUL OF LEE 

said he, *'by civilization and Christianity are not less 
obligatory in the country of the enemy than in our 
own. The commanding general considers that no 
greater disgrace could befall the army and through it 
our whole people than the perpetration of the bar- 
barous outrages upon the innocent and defenceless, 
and the wanton destruction of private property, that 
have marked the course of the enemy in our own 
country. . . . We make war on armed men and we 
cannot take vengeance for the wrongs our people 
have suffered, without lowering ourselves in the eyes 
of all whose abhorrence has been excited by the atroc- 
ities of the enemy, and offending against Him to 
whom vengeance belongeth." 

This order of their noble commander was strictly 
obeyed by the soldiers of the Confederate Army. 
Again and again in this Pennsylvania campaign the 
citizens told us that we treated them far better than 
their own soldiers did. I can truly say I did not 
see a fence rail burned between Hagerstown and 
Gettysburg. What a contrast was presented in this 
respect to the armies of Napoleon of whom the his- 
torian says, describing one of the campaigns: "The 
Emperor's Army soon took to plundering the country 
wholesale, considering the vanquished as having no 
rights worth mentioning." Commenting on this. 
Count von Wartenburg says. Napoleon "could only 
reach his highest aims by demanding enormous 
efforts, and could exact this only by fanning all the 
passions of his soldiers, and permitting them to satisfy 
them. He could only conquer the world by aban- 



APPENDIX 223 

doning its constituent parts to his instrument as their 
booty."* 

What a sublime contrast to all this is presented 
by this Southern army of invasion ! They performed 
deeds of arms equal to any achieved by the armies of 
Napoleon; they made marches as long, as arduous, 
and as rapid as any that his soldiers made; they 
endured hardships far greater than any endured by 
his army. But they did and endured all these things, 
not because their commander fanned the passions of 
his soldiers, and permitted them to satisfy these pas- 
sions by abandoning the country and the people to 
plunder; but because of the pure spirit of patriotism 
that burned in their breasts. Where indeed in 
all the records of history shall we find an army 
that endured what Lee's Army endured, and 
achieved what it achieved, without reward, save the 
pitiful pay of $ii Confederate money a month! 
It is when we contemplate these things that we 
realize how sublime was the spirit of devotion that 
animated the private soldiers of the Confederacy. 

I have already said that E well's objective was the 
city of Harrisburg. Indeed this was the objective 
of the whole army. Both Gen. Early, marching 
through York, and Gen. Hill, crossing the South 
Mountain and passing through Cashtown, were in- 
structed to cross the Susquehanna and move upon 
Harrisburg. Up to the evening of the 28th of June, 

*Napoleon as a General, by Count Yorck von Wartenburg 
(pp. 310-11, 379). 



224 THE SOUL OF LEE 

the orders issued by Gen. Lee contemplated the con- 
centration of his whole army at or near Harrisburg, 
but late that evening intelligence was brought which 
gave him his first information that Hooker had crossed 
the Potomac; that he had subsequently been relieved 
of the command of the Army of the Potomac by 
Gen. Meade; and that that officer, with his whole 
army, was marching rapidly northward. This occa- 
sioned a complete change in Lee's campaign. Orders 
were at once issued to Gen. Ewell at Carhsle to 
march southward and by him to Early at York to 
retrace his steps, marching southwest. The whole 
army was now to concentrate at or near Cashtown, 
which is on the eastern breast of the great South 
Mountain, eight miles west of Gettysburg. Here 
Lee hoped in a very advantageous position to fight 
a defensive battle. His three corps under Ewell, 
Hill and Longstreet were rapidly concentrating at 
the chosen point. 

IV. First Day's Battle 

Let us now point out that the battle of Gettys- 
burg was begun on the ist of July without orders from 
Gen. Lee, and without his knowledge, and when, in 
fact, he was himself far away from the field. We 
have a letter of his dated Greenwood (about 9 miles 
west of Cashtown, and 17 miles west of Gettys- 
burg), July ist, 7:30 A.M., in which he gives certain 
directions to Gen. Imboden, then at Chambersburg; 
and adds, "my headquarters for the present will be 



APPENDIX 225 

at Cashtown." At that very moment Lieut.-Gen. 
Hill was marching, without orders and on his own 
responsibihty, from Cashtown to Gettysburg with 
his two leading divisions, under Heth and Pender, 
and his artillery. Thus Gen. Lee's purpose to fight 
a defensive battle, and to fight it at Cashtown, was 
frustrated by the unauthorized action of the com- 
mander of one of his corps. 

Gen. Ewell, marching south from CarHsle for Cash- 
town, heard the noise of the battle, and turning the 
head of his column in that direction, came to Gen. 
Hill's assistance just in time to avert a serious dis- 
aster. Soon afterward Gen. Early, marching west- 
ward from York, came upon the ground, and threw 
his division promptly into action. Thus a grat 
battle was joined, without orders, in which about 
50,000 men were engaged; about half on the Con- 
federate side and half on the Union side.* 

Gen. Lee and his staff, says Gen. Long, were ascend- 
ing South Mountain on their way from Greenwood 
to Cashtown, when firing was heard in the directon 

* As to the numbers engaged in the battle of July ist General 
Doubleday testified before the Congressional Committee 
(I, p. 309), that the two Federal Corps put into the fight 
not more than 14,000 men "to contend against two immense 
corps of the enemy, amounting to 60,000 men." What mag- 
nifying glasses Federal officers put on when they studied the 
size of the Confederate forces! Now General Butterfield 
testified that the First and Eleventh Corps mustered on June 
10, 1863, together 24,000 men, and they had fought no battle 
since. — (See Southern Historical Society Papers, 1877, vol. IV, 
p. 83.) 



226 THE SOUL OF LEE 

of Gettysburg. This caused Gen. Lee some uneasi- 
ness; he first thought that the firing indicated a 
cavalry affair of minor importance, but by the 
time Cashtown had been reached the sound had 
become heavy and continuous and indicated a severe 
engagement. 

This statement is confirmed by Gen. Pendleton. 

I wish to emphasize the fact already stated that 
Gen. Hill's advance to Gettysburg on the early morn- 
ing of July ist was made entirely upon his own 
responsibiHty. 

I will not enter upon a description of the battle of 
July I St except to say that it opened unfavorably for 
Gen. Hill, in the defeat of the brigades of Archer and 
Davis of Heth's division. Gen. Archer with a large 
part of his brigade was captured. By the timely 
arrival of Rodes' division of Ewell's corps about 2 p.m. 
and subsequently of Early's division, the tide of battle 
was turned and the Confederates were victorious 
along the whole Hne. Fifty thousand men had been 
engaged in the battle — about equally divided between 
the contestants. For six hours the battle raged — in 
the morning favorably to the Federals, but, as 
already stated, victory ultimately perched upon the 
Confederate banners; 5000 prisoners were captured, 
including two general officers, not counting the 
wounded, and three pieces of artillery. Gen. Rey- 
nolds, esteemed the ablest commander in the Union 
Army, was killed. The Confederate victory was com- 
plete, but nothing like as complete as it would have 
been had a brigade of Stuart's cavalry been present 



APPENDIX 227 

to reap the fruits of victory. As Capt. Battine says: 
" The want of looo lancers lost the Confederates the 
chance of destroying two Federal corps and capturing 
all their guns." 

And now occurred a disastrous blunder. The 
victorious Confederates were ordered to halt. 

Let me here transcribe the account given by Gen. 
Gordon himself, who says " the whole of that portion of 
the Union Army in my front was in inextricable con- 
fusion, and in flight. . . . The fire upon my men had 
almost ceased, large bodies of the Union troops were 
throwing down their arms and surrendering, because 
in disorganized and confused masses they were wholly 
powerless to either check the movement or return the 
firing. As far down the hne as my eye could reach 
the Union troops were in retreat ... in less than half 
an hour my troops would have swept up and over 
those hills, the possession of which was of such 
important and momentous consequence. It is not 
surprising that with the full reaHzation of the con- 
sequences of a halt I should have refused at first to 
obey the order. Not until the third or fourth order 
of the most peremptory character reached me did I 
obey."* 

Gen. Lee, as I have already stated, did not arrive 
upon the field until the battle was nearly over. Gen. 
Long says: ''Near the close of the action Gen. Lee 
reached the field." I myself saw him when he 
arrived, and watched him while he swept the horizon 

* Reminiscences of the Civil War, p. 153. 



228 THE SOUL OF LEE 

with his glass. He promptly sent one of his staff, 
Col. Walter Taylor, to Gen. Ewell, saying that from 
the position which he occupied he could see the 
enemy retreating over those hills, without organiza- 
tion and in great confusion; that it was only neces- 
sary to press those people in order to secure possession 
of those heights, and if possible he wished him to do 
this. Col. Taylor says: ''Gen. Ewell did not express 
any objection, but left the impression upon my mind 
that the order conveyed to him would be executed." * 
It was then between 3 and 4 o'clock in the after- 
noon. At least three hours of daylight remained 
during which Ewell could have executed Gen. Lee's 
order. He did not execute it, however, although 
earnestly solicited to do so by Gen. Early, Gen. 
Gordon and Gen. Trimble. The last named officer 
was most urgent. "Give me a division," said he, 
"and I will engage to take that hill." When this 
was declined he said: "Give me a brigade and I will 
do it." When this, too, was declined he said: "Give 
me a good regiment and I will engage to take that 
hill." When this was declined the gallant Trimble 
threw down his sword and left Gen. Ewell's head- 
quarters, saying that he would not serve longer under 
such an officer! He could do this because he had no 
command, and was acting as a volunteer aid. He 
participated gallantly in the great charge on the 
third day of the battle, in command of Pender's 
division, and was severely wounded and captured. 

*Four Years with Lee, p. 95. 



APPENDIX 229 

Here then we find still another of Gen. Lee's 
lieutenants, the gallant and usually energetic Ewell, 
failing at a critical moment to recognize what ought 
to be done; failing also to carry out the suggestion 
and conditional order of Gen. Lee himself, although 
urgently solicited to do so by three of his subordinate 
generals. Had the advance upon Cemetery Hill 
been pushed forward promptly that afternoon we 
now know beyond any possible question that the hill 
was feebly occupied, and could have been easily 
taken, and thus Meade would have been compelled 
to retreat to the hne of Pipe's Creek, or else would 
have been disastrously defeated. Gen. Gordon, in 
his Reminiscences, tells us that his heart was so bur- 
dened by the mistake of that afternoon that he was 
unable to sleep. 

Was it not, indeed, extraordinary bHndness to wait 
at the foot of Cemetery hill for 24 hours while the 
Federal troops were making their lines impregnable 
before the Confederate forces were led to the attack? 
Here then we have to record the failure of still 
another of General Lee's Heutenants, a fine and gal- 
lant soldier. No wonder Colonel Mcintosh exclaims 
in his account of the battle, " A greater military 
blunder was never committed." 

V. Second Day 

The first of the three days' battle of Gettysburg 
had ended in a brilliant success for the Confederates; 
but it was a costly victory, for it compelled Gen. Lee 



230 THE SOUL OF LEE 

to accept the alternative of retreating or fighting; 
fighting on a field where the Federals had every 
advantage of position; where they must be assaulted 
at a great disadvantage whether on the right, or the 
left flank, or in the center. Whoever has visited the 
field will recognize the great difficulty of a con- 
certed attack by the forces of Lee, and will also recog- 
nize that when Meade was attacked on one side of his 
line he could hurry troops easily and quickly from 
another part to its succor, because his position was 
like a horseshoe, or rather like a fishhook, and he 
held the interior line. And yet in my opinion Gen. 
Lee's decision to attack the Federal Army the next day 
was justified by the situation at nightfall of July ist. 
The enemy, to the number of about 25,000, had 
been defeated with great loss and driven from the 
field in great disorder; 5000 prisoners had been taken 
including several general officers; one corps had been 
almost annihilated, the finest officer in the Union 
Army had been killed. Lee's army was well con- 
centrated, Longstreet's corps, except Pickett's divi- 
sion having bivouacked within four miles of Gettys- 
burg; whereas a large part of the Federal Army was 
still far from the field (and Lee knew it). Moreover 
the key of the position. Little Round Top, was 
within Lee's grasp, if at least he might count on 
his orders being obeyed. Gen, Lee could not fore- 
see that the first corps, then four miles from the 
field, would not be launched against Little Round 
Top until 4 P.M. next day, though two of its divi- 
sions were in position for attack at sunrise. 



APPENDIX 231 

A conference was held that evening between Lee 
and his principal commanders on the left flank, at 
which it was decided that Longstreet should com- 
mence the battle the next day by a forward move- 
ment, having as its object the seizing of the com- 
manding position on the enemy's left. 

Gen. Early states that he left the conference with 
the distinct understanding (in which Ewell and Rodes 
agreed) that Longstreet should make the attack early 
next morning. Gen. Pendleton, chief of artillery, is 
on record as saying that Lee told him that night that 
he had ordered Longstreet to attack at sunrise. Hill, 
in his official report, says: "Gen. Longstreet was to 
attack the flank of the enemy and sweep down his 
hne." A great deal of controversy has arisen upon 
this point, but the evidence given by a number of 
officers of high standing is so strong, that it is impos- 
sible to resist the conclusion that Longstreet was 
instructed to make his attack early in the morning. 
He himself, in his report, acknowledges that he was 
directed to attack "as early as practicable"; but he 
excused himself from doing so by saying that "he 
did not wish to go into battle with one boot off," 
referring to the fact that one of his divisions (Pickett's) 
had not arrived on the field. 

Gen. Long says that on the evening of July ist, 
Lee said to Longstreet and Hill: "Gentlemen, we 
will attack the enemy in the morning as early as 
practicable." That Lee himself expected the attack 
to be made early is certain ; he was on the ground at 
daybreak July 2d, and showed some impatience at 



232 THE SOUL OF LEE 

Longstreet's failure to attack, saying to one of his 
oflScers: ''Longstreet is so slow." Capt. Poague, of 
the artillery, in a letter addressed to Mr. Thomas 
Nelson Page, says that "at 9 a.m., southwest of Big 
Round Top, I ran across Gen. Lee riding through the 
woods. He said: 'Have you seen Gen. Longstreet 
or any of his troops in this neighborhood?' and ex- 
pressed impatience and disappointment, adding: 'I 
wonder where Longstreet can be.'" Conclusive 
proof that Longstreet knew he was expected to 
attack at an early hour is found in the fact that both 
Hood and McLaws moved at daybreak and were in 
position to attack at sunrise. 

As to the prospects of success had an attack been 
made early, the English military critic already 
referred to, Capt. Battine, says: "There can be no 
doubt that the opportunity was the brightest the 
Confederates had made for themselves since they let 
McClellan escape from the banks of the Chicka- 
hominy." "One-third of the Federal Army had 
been severely defeated; the remainder were con- 
centrating with difficulty, by forced marches; a 
prompt employment of all his available forces would 
have placed victory within Lee's grasp. The resolu- 
tion to attack was therefore sound and wise; the 
failure lay not in the plan but in the faults of execu- 
tion which were caused to some extent by the want of 
sympathetic cooperation by the corps commanders." 

Col. Henderson says that at dayhght of July 2d 
there were no more than 40,000 men present on the 
Union front, and that the Confederate attack should 



APPENDIX 233 

have been made at that hour. Only four of the 
seven corps of Meade's army were present and two 
of them had been roughly handled the day before. 
By eight o'clock two more had come up, making in 
all some 55,000 men. Longstreet's course must be 
pronounced inexplicable and inexcusable. Instead 
of cheerfully cooperating with the plan of his great 
leader, he undertook to argue the question; and 
Henderson says Lee lost the battle of Gettysburg 
because he allowed his second in command to argue 
instead of marching! The statement of Col. Hen- 
derson is confirmed by Major Steele in his well- 
known work on American campaigns. He says 
(p. 373), that at 7 A.M. the 6th Corps, and one- 
third of the 3d, and one-third of the 5th Corps 
were absent; at 9 a.m. the rest of the 3d Corps 
arrived; at 12 m. the rest of the 5th Corps; at 
10:30. A.M. the artillery reserves under Hunt came 
up; not until between 4 and 6 p.m. did the 6th Corps 
come up, after a continuous march of 34 miles. He 
also says that Buford's Cavalry had been ordered to 
Westminster, and thus the left of the line was left 
uncovered. Longstreet's attack was not made until 
4 P.M., — although his troops began to move about 
2 o'clock. Thus his attack was delayed until the 
whole Federal Army had arrived upon the ground 
and the golden opportunity of winning a great vic- 
tory was lost. 

There is, however, one feature of the drama on 
that fateful morning of July 2d which baffles all 
attempts at explanation. Gen. Lee knew, through 



234 THE SOUL OF LEE 

prisoners (Hist. Papers, 1877, vol. IV, p. 268), that 
only a portion of the Federal Army occupied the 
opposite ridge. "It is clear," says Henderson, "that 
an opportunity presented itself of dealing with the 
enemy in detail ; and the meanest capacity must have 
grasped the advantage of storming the strong posi- 
tion south of Gettysburg before it should be occu- 
pied in overwhelming strength." 

Yet he allowed Longstreet to argue against the 
assault, instead of making an immediate attack. That 
officer says "he went to Lee at daybreak, and re- 
newed his views against making the attack. He 
seemed resolved, however." 

But the thing that bafHes us is this: Why did not 
Lee give Longstreet then absolute orders to advance 
to the attack? Hood and McLaws, with their splen- 
did divisions, were in position at sunrise. Why did 
not Gen. Lee, knowing that every hour of delay was 
lessening the hope of success, launch those troops 
to the assault at once, in spite of Longstreet's objec- 
tion? 

It would seem that the mind of the great com- 
mander wavered, for he mounted his horse and rode 
over to confer with Ewell, on the left, to see if a suc- 
cessful attack could be made from that side, "not 
wishing," says Gen. Fitz Lee, "to drive his right 
corps commander into battle when he did not want 
to go." (p. 278.) 

What a moment of fate it was! Gen. McLaws, 
sitting on his horse, could see the enemy coming, hour 
after hour, on to the battlefield. And he was con- 



APPENDIX 235 

vinced that if permitted to advance "his command 
could reach the point indicated by Gen. Lee in half 
an hour."* 

Major Steele tells us the location of Meade's five 
corps at 7 a.m. the morning of July 2d. It appears 
that the ist and nth Corps were on Cemetery Hill; 
Wadsworth's division on Gulp's Hill; the 12th Corps 
on the right of Wadsworth; the 2d Corps to the left 
of the nth on Cemetery Ridge. "The 3d Corps was 
placed so as to prolong the line to the Round Top on 

* General Long tells us of a conversation he held with Gen- 
eral Lee in the evening of July ist, in which he said to General 
Lee, "In my opinion it would be best not to wait for Stuart. 
It is uncertain where he is, or when he will arrive. At present 
only two or three corps of the enemy's army are up, and it 
seems best to attack them before they can be greatly strength- 
ened by reinforcements. The cavalry had better be left to 
take care of itself." — Memoirs of R. E. Lee, p. 278. 

Hood says he was in front of the heights of Gettysburg soon 
after daybreak. General Lee was then walking up and down. 
"He seemed anxious that Longstreet should attack," says 
Hood. Longstreet said, seating himself near the trunk of a 
tree by his side, "The General is a little nervous this morning. 
He wishes me to attack. I do not want to do so without Pick- 
ett. I never like to go into battle with one boot oiif." — Fitz 
Lee's Life of Lee, p. 279. 

McLaws says he was ordered to leave camp at 4 a.m., after- 
wards changed to sunrise; reached G. very early, halted head 
of his column a few hundred yards of Lee. Conference between 
Longstreet and Lee, former appeared irritated and angered. 
Beheved he could reach point indicated by Lee in half hour. 
Saw the enemy coming hour after hour, on to the battlefield. 
Wilcox went into line on Anderson's right at 9. Seven hours 
after in same woods McLaws formed. — Id, p. 279. 



236 THE SOUL OF LEE 

the left," Thus there was only one corps, the 3d. on 
Meade's left, to oppose Longstreet's advance had it 
been promptly made. Buford's cavalry division, 
which had been posted near Round Top, had been 
ordered away, and so the left of the line was left uncov- 
ered. What a magnificent opportunity was thus 
offered to the Confederates, had Longstreet heartily 
cooperated with Lee in his purpose to make the 
attack at an early hour on the 2d! Gen. E. P. 
Alexander tells us that Longstreet was not ordered 
to attack until 11 a.m. This, although not intended 
to be such, is a misleading statement. Lee was not 
in the habit of giving written orders to his Lieu- 
tenant-Generals. He plainly indicated to Long- 
street, as the testimony overwhelmingly shows, that 
the attack should be made on the left as early as 
practicable the next morning. When, however, 
Longstreet hesitated and objected and argued against 
it, he was at length compelled to issue a written order, 
and that was at 11 a.m. Even then victory was pos- 
sible; but so apathetic was Longstreet that it was 

3 P.M. before Hood's division in advance crossed the 
Emmitsburg road and moved against the enemy; 

4 P.M. before he fired a gun. Now it was 4 o'clock 
before Little Round Top, 670 feet high, the key of the 
position, was (at the instance of Gen. Warren) 
occupied by a portion of the 5th Corps. The two 
brigades ordered to the spot arrived just in time to 
anticipate Hood's seizing the point. 

It must be acknowledged, however, that "Hill 
and Ewell were also at fault, for they had been ordered 



APPENDIX 237 

to cooperate with Longstreet's battle, but they lim- 
ited their operations to an ineffective canonnading 
of the Federal entrenchments in front. Longstreet's 
attack began at 4; they did not begin their infantry 
attack until 6 p.m." 

This second day's battle has been well described 
by Major Steele as follows: "On the part of the 
Confederates, a succession of tardy assaults, unsup- 
ported attacks, in which only one division, Pickett's, 
had not yet reached the field; and three others, 
Heth's, Pender's and Rodes', and four brigades had 
scarcely fired a shot. On the part of the Federals, a 
perfectly well arranged if passive defence in which 
every imperilled section of the line had been promptly 
reinforced and every assault of the enemy repulsed." 

(p. 378.) 

It seems that among the Confederate leaders that 
day the coordinating faculty was paralyzed. 

This failure of Gen. Longstreet to achieve what 
was expected of him differs vitally from the failures 
of Stuart, and Hill, and Ewell. Stuart committed a 
most serious error of judgment; Hill acted rashly 
and without orders; Ewell failed to perceive the 
golden opportunity that presented itself to him to 
seize Cemetery Hill; but there is no reason to doubt 
the loyalty of any of these three brave soldiers to 
their commander. This cannot be said of Gen. 
Longstreet; he displayed on this occasion an ob- 
stinate unwillingness to carry out the wishes of his 
commander; not only did he fail to move as early as 
practicable on the morning of July 2d against the 



238 THE SOUL OF LEE 

Federal left, but he sought Gen. Lee and objected to 
his plan and entered into an argument to convince 
him that it was faulty. Gen. Sorrell, who was his 
chief of staff, in his account of the battle says that 
"Longstreet did not want to fight on the ground or 
on the plan adopted by the General-in-Chief." He 
made determined objection. Gen. Sorrell (p. i66) 
says "he failed to conceal some anger,''' and he con- 
tinues ''there was apparent apathy that lacked the 
fire and point of his usual bearing on the battlefield." 
Warm as was Gen. Sorrell's admiration for Gen. 
Longstreet he cannot conceal his disapprobation at 
his delay; he says, "On the 2d, quite late, 4 p.m., 
Longstreet made his long-deferred attack on the 
enemy's left. ... He gained ground rapidly and 
almost carried Round Top; but the morning delay 
was fatal. The enemy had been heavily reinforced 
while we were pottering around in sullen inactivity. 
Undoubtedly it was Lee's intention to make the attack 
in the forenoon, and support it by strong movements 
of Hill and Ewell." (p. 168.) 

Had he made an early attack it is absolutely cer- 
tain that he would have made himself master of the 
two Round Tops and that would have decided the 
battle. Had he even attacked promptly after 11 
o'clock, when he acknowledges he received a positive 
order to attack, there is every reason to have antici- 
pated success. Even at the late hour when he finally 
did make his attack, 4 p.m., Gen. Longstreet had an 
opportunity of seizing Round Top, but refused to 
embrace it. Scouts reported to Gen. Hood that 



APPENDIX 239 

Round Top was unoccupied and that there were no 
troops in the rear. This intelHgence was corroborated 
by prisoners. Hood sent three officers in succes- 
sion to Longstreet to urge that he have permission 
to make the move on the Federal left which would 
give him Round Top, but he doggedly refused, 
saying that "Gen. Lee had ordered the attack to be 
made on the Emmitsburg road." 

On this Col. Henderson says: "His summary mes- 
sage to the divisional commander to carry out the 
original plan at least lays him open to the suspicion 
that although he was prepared to obey, it was like a 
machine, and not Uke an intelligent being." Such 
conduct is deserving of the severest reprehension. 

In endeavoring to defend himself from the criti- 
cism which his conduct on that occasion called forth, 
Longstreet assailed Gen. Lee (after his death) with a 
rancor which must be resented by every true Confed- 
erate soldier. In his book he declares that Gen. Lee 
made eleven capital mistakes in the battle of Gettys- 
burg! (One mistake Gen. Lee certainly did make 
at Gettysburg — which, however, Longstreet does not 
mention — he did not relieve that officer of his com- 
mand!) It cannot be denied that Longstreet's 
writings exhibit excessive self-esteem and sheer jeal- 
ousy. We cannot forget, moreover, that had he 
obeyed Gen. Lee's orders he would have been at the 
battle of Chancellorsville with the fine divisions under 
his command, in which event Hooker's army might 
have been not defeated as it was, but actually de- 
stroyed. 



240 THE SOUL OF LEE 

Here let me quote a remarkable passage from the 
oration of Edward Everett at Gettysburg. 

At the dedication of the Cemetery for Federal 
Soldiers killed at Gettysburg, Mr. Everett, in presence 
of President Lincoln, said: "And here I cannot but 
remark on the Providential inaction of the rebel 
army. Had the conflict been renewed by it at day- 
light on the 2d of July, with the ist and nth Corps 
exhausted by battle, the 3d and 12 th weary from 
their forced march, and the 2d and 6th not yet ar- 
rived, nothing but a miracle could have saved the 
army from a great disaster. Instead of this, the day 
dawned, the sun rose, the cool hours of the morning 
passed, and a considerable part of the afternoon wore 
away without the shghtest aggressive movement on 
the part of the enemy. Thus time was given half 
our forces to arrive and take their places in the lines, 
while the rest of the army enjoyed a much-needed 
half day's repose." 

To Sum Up the Events of Second Day 

On the left Early had stormed and taken the works 
on Cemetery Hill, but, not being supported, had been 
repulsed. Further to the south, Hill had stormed 
another part of Cemetery Hill, with exactly the same 
experience. 

On our extreme right Longstreet had lost the chance 
of seizing Round Top (755 feet), but had achieved 
notable success in the Peach Orchard and in Devil's 
Den, inflicting severe defeat on General Sickles. 



APPENDIX 241 

On our extreme left in front of Gulp's Hill (633 
feet) a very important success had been achieved by 
Johnson's division. It is thus described in Gen. Lee's 
official report, "The troops of Gen. Jolinson moved 
steadily up the steep and rugged accHvity under a 
heavy fire, driving the enemy into his entrenchments, 
part of which were carried by Steuart's brigade, and 
a number of prisoners taken." The position thus 
so hardly won was one of great importance. It was 
within a few hundred yards of the Baltimore Turn- 
pike, which I think it commanded. Its capture was 
a breach in the enemy's Hues through which troops 
might have been poured and the strong position of 
Cemetery Hill rendered untenable.* 

Gen. Howard, commander of the nth Corps, says, 
"The ground was rough and the woods so thick that 
their generals did not realize until morning what they 
had gained." Dr. Jacobs says, "This might have 
proved disastrous to us had it not occurred at so late 
an hour." And Swinton, the Federal historian, 

* I. As to the character of these works, they were built of 
heavy logs with earth piled: against them to the thickness of 
five feet, and abattis in front. 

2. "Through the long hours of the night we heard the rum- 
bling of their guns, and thought they were evacuating the hill. 
The first streak of daylight revealed our mistake. It was 
scarcely dawn (the writer of this had just lain down to sleep, 
after a night in the sa,ddle) when the artillery opened upon us 
at a range of about five hundred yards, a terrific and galling 
fire, to which we had no means of replying, as our guns could 
not be dragged up that steep and rugged ascent." — Letter of 
R. H. McKim soon after the battle. 



242 THE SOUL OF LEE 

declared, "It was a position which if held by him 
would enable him to take Meade'' s entire line in reverse. " 
It is only in keeping with the hap-hazard char- 
acter of the whole battle that the capture of a 
point of such strategic importance should not have 
been taken advantage of by the Confederates. It 
remains, however, no less a proud memory for the 
ofl&cers and men of Steuart's brigade that their 
prowess gained for the Confederate General a posi- 
tion whence Meade's entire Une might have been 
taken in reverse. But if the Confederates did not 
reaHze what they had gained, the Federals were fully 
aware what they had lost. Accordingly they spent 
the night massing troops and artillery for an effort to 
regain their works. "During the night," says 
Swinton, "a powerful artillery was accumulated 
against the point entered by the enemy." "To one 
conversant with the ground," says a Federal authority, 
"it is now apparent why the enemy did not reply. 
The creeks, the forest, and the steep accKvities made 
it utterly impossible for him to move his guns, and 
this circumstance contributed to the weakness of his 
position and the futility of his occupation of this part 
of the line." 

Sufficient emphasis has not been laid upon the 
achievement of Steuart's brigade just referred to. 
It was probably the most important success attained 
on any part of our line, had our staff ofhcers only 
recognized the fact. Let it be noted that this posi- 
tion was held by this devoted brigade for about four- 
teen hours, from 9 o'clock in the evening to n the 



APPENDIX 243 

next morning, and the courage and tenacity exhibited 
by these troops was not surpassed by any unit of 
Lee's army in that great battle. Professor Jacobs 
(Federal) says, "The battle raged furiously and was 
maintained with desperate obstinacy on both sides." 
He goes on to speak of the terrible slaughter of our 
men. Gen. Howard says: "I went over the ground 
five years after the battle, and marks of the struggle 
were still to be observed. The moss on the rocks 
was still discolored in hundreds of places where the 
bullets had struck. The trees as cut off, knocked 
down, or shivered, were still there; stumps and trees 
were perforated with holes where leaden balls had 
since been taken out, and remnants of the rough 
breastworks still remained. I did not wonder that 
Gen. Geary, who was in the thickest of this fight, 
thought the main battle of Gettysburg must have 
been fought there." In fact, seven brigades were 
concentrated in the attack upon Steuart's brigade, 
and they were supported by a powerful artillery. 
Whitelaw Reid says, "From four to five there was 
heavy cannonading from our batteries nearest the 
contested point . . . the rebels made no reply . . . 
the musketry crash continued with unparalleled 
tenacity and vehemence." 

VI. Third Day 

We come now to the third and last day of the 
battle. 

Count von Wartenburg, in his brilliant work on the 



244 THE SOUL OF LEE 

campaigns of Napoleon (published in 1902) says: 
"In the case of Lee we admire much that is Napo- 
leonic in the conception of his plans." Now his 
determination to pierce the center of Meade's line on 
the third day was the adoption of one of Napoleon's 
favorite methods. "The young general, Bonaparte, 
initiated his brilliant career by piercing the enemy's 
center: He employed the same method again in 18 12 
in the most magnificent and well thought out manner, 
and once more in the opening of the last of all his cam- 
paigns. At Austerlitz he ordered Marechal Soult 
to assail the heights of Praetzen, thus piercing the 
center of the Austro-Russian Army. This gave him 
the victory. In the same way at Rivoli, he sac- 
rificed his wings in order to decide the issue in the 
center; and again at Eylau; and yet again at Wag- 
ram." In the same way Lee now determined to 
assail the center of Meade's line, and gave directions 
to Longstreet to make the assault early next morning. 

But the question has been raised, " Was Lee justi- 
fied in expecting success in adopting this Napoleonic 
method at this center? Was there any reasonable 
hope of success in the grand assault which he ordered 
on the third day of the battle?" 

In answering this question we may now take into 
account the statement made by Maj.-Gen. Double- 
day, who commanded the ist Corps of Meade's 
army. He says that "on the night of July 2d the 
state of affairs was disheartening. In the combats 
of the preceding days the ist, 3d and nth Corps 
had been almost annihilated; the 5th Corps and a 



APPENDIX 245 

great part of the 2d were shattered and only the 6th 
Corps and the 12th were comparatively fresh." 
(Chancellorsville and Gettysburg, p. 185.) 

He also says that Meade "thought it better to 
retreat with what he had than to run the risk of losing 
all." {Id.) 

We know also from the testimony of Gen. Sickles 
before the Congressional Committee that at the 
Council of War the night of July 2d, some of the 
generals were in favor of a retreat. 

Gen. Sorrell, Longstreet's chief of staff, admits in 
his book that the attack was to be made as soon as 
possible, and he adds, "the delay in attacking, which 
undoubtedly hurt us, was apparently caused by his 
objections made known to the Commander-in-Chief," 
(p. 171.) 

And now we have a repetition of the events of the 
previous day. Instead of attacking early in the 
morning Longstreet did not begin his dispositions 
to attack until i p.m. He argued against Lee's plan 
as he had done the day before; he was completely 
out of sympathy with his commander. Such was his 
self-esteem that he beHeved his judgment superior to 
that of Gen. Lee. The consequence of this delay 
was that instead of a simultaneous attack on the 
enemy's center by Longstreet, and on his right by 
Ewell and Hill, we have again a series of isolated 
attacks. In obedience to orders, Gen. Ewell attacked 
the enemy at sunrise. Meade, not assailed on his 
left, concentrated an enormous force against Ewell 
on his right; seven brigades, as just stated, attacked 



246 THE SOUL OF LEE 

Steuart's one brigade on Gulp's Hill; and so before 
Longstreet had begun to get ready to make his attack 
on the center, Ewell's attack on the right had been 
made and defeated. 

But this is not all. Gen. Longstreet disobeyed 
Gen. Lee in another respect; it is an unquestionable 
fact, supported by testimony from various sources, 
that Longstreet was directed to put his whole corps 
into the attack. Indeed he himself admits it. (See 
Henderson's Lecture, p. 15.)* The divisions of 
McLaws and Hood and Pickett were all to be em- 
ployed. He was to be reinforced moreover by Heth's 
division, and by two brigades of Pender's division, 
to the command of which Major-Gen. Trimble was 
assigned— and Gen. Hill was ordered to afford Gen. 
Longstreet further assistance if necessary. Instead 
of this Longstreet sent forward about 12,000 men f 
only to assail the whole Federal Army. They made 
the assault, those Virginians and North Carolinians, 
with magnificent gallantry. They pierced the en- 
emy's center, but where were their supports? where 
were the divisions of McLaws and Hood? Where the 
brigades Hill was to put in? The answer is, — idle, 

* "He rode over after sunrise and gave his orders. His plan 
was to assault the enemy's left centre by a column to be com- 
posed of McLaw's and Hood's divisions, reinforced by Pickett's 
brigades. I thought it would not do." — Longstreet. 

t This is the estimate of Jesse Bowman Young, a Federal 
writer, in his valuable book. The Battle of Gettysburg, published 
in 1913 by Harper Bros., p. 306. He points out that Wilcox's 
brigade took no part in the assault. 



APPENDIX 247 

looking on, doing nothing! This devoted column 
of 42 regiments, possibly 12,000 men, assaulted nearly 
the whole Federal Army, while four-fifths of the Con- 
federate Army looked on without firing a shot. At 
the moment of their success they looked back vainly 
for support; "not a single Confederate bayonet, save 
in the hands of wounded or retreating men, was 
between them and the ridge from which they had 
advanced, 1200 yards in the rear. Fiercely they 
struggled to maintain their position, but their courage 
had been thrown away." {Id., p. 16.) 

Could there be a more conspicuous illustration of 
the disregard of Napoleon's maxim that in a decisive 
attack the last man and the last horse should be 
thrown in?* 

And now we have a strange incident to record — 
Col. Freemantle, the accomplished English officer, 
who was present with Longstreet's command during 
the battle, tells us in his book (p. 281) that Long- 
street talked to him for a long time about the battle; 
he said the mistake they had made was in not con- 
centrating the army more and making the attack 
with 30,000 instead of 15,000 men. That mistake, 
we know infallibly, was not made by Gen. Lee, but 

*"The staff, as we have seen, seemed utterly incapable, 
throughout the battle, of bringing the efiorts of the larger units 
into timely cooperation, and at the most important crisis of 
the whole engagement their failure to insure combination 
was conspicuous. In the first place there is no doubt that Lee 
intended that 30,000 men should have been employed instead 
of 15,000." — {Henderson, p. 18.) 



248 THE SOUL OF LEE 

by Gen. Longstreet himself. Had Gen. Lee really 
intended to assail the Federal position with so slender 
a column, he would have been unworthy the com- 
mand of a great army. 

Was Success Possible? 

The question has often been discussed, "What 
would have been the result if Lee's orders had been 
carried out and this charge of Pickett's division been 
supported by the troops of McLaws and Hood or 
those of Hill?" 

I am able to throw light on that question from three 
sources: First, by the courtesy of Col. R. P. Chew, 
Jackson's chief of horse artillery, I am able to give an 
opinion expressed by Capt. Fitzhugh, who com- 
manded a battery in the Federal Army at that point 
of the line. At the crisis of the charge he was ordered 
by Gen. Hunt to put in his battery and open on the 
charging Confederates. He expressed to Col. Chew 
astonishment that Pickett's charge had not been sup- 
ported, saying that he could see large bodies of troops 
available for this purpose but making no movement 
in their support. Col. Chew asked Capt. Fitzhugh 
what in his opinion would have been the result if 
they had been advanced to Armistead's support. He 
said they would have pierced the Federal Army and 
certain defeat would have awaited it. "The Fed- 
eral troops were streaming to the rear and fresh 
troops thrown into the breach would have decided 
the battle in favor of the Confederates." 



APPENDIX 249 

Secondly. Testimony of a Federal artilleryman: 
On Tuesday, November ii, 1913, at 924 Pennsyl- 
vania Avenue, S. E., I had a conversation with W. A. 
Bobb, who left home at 14 and entered the United 
States service. He was 16 years old at time of the 
battle, and served as a private in Battery A, 2d Corps, 
United States Army. He was engaged at the point 
where Armistead's men broke through the Federal 
line. He said that the ammunition (of his battery) 
was almost exhausted; only two or three rounds left. 
In his opinion, if the charge had been supported, it 
would have proved disastrous to the Union Army. 
All the artillery would have fallen into our hands. 
Their horses were nearly all killed or disabled. Their 
support, a New York regiment, 200 yards in rear, 
had taken to flight and left them alone. 

I give a third testimony from the Federal side of 
this point. 

The late Gen. W. P. Craighill (of the Union Army) 
said that he had often reflected with a feehng of awe 
on the fact that that great charge on the third day 
was a wedge that almost spKt the Union in two. In 
his opinion, if the charge had been supported, as Lee 
ordered, it would have wrecked the Union line and 
given the Confederates a decisive victory. 

Thus we have concurrent testimony from a private 
artilleryman, from the captain of a battery, both at 
the salient when the shock of the charge broke over, 
and from a general oflicer — an accomplished engineer. 

I hold, therefore, in the hght of this testimony that 
our great commander was justified in ordering that 



250 THE SOUL OF LEE 

grand assault on July 3d, and that had his orders been 
carried out, as they might and should have been, it 
would have resulted in a decisive victory. 

Gen. Longstreet himself tells us that Lee's 
plan was "to assault the enemy's left center by a 
column composed of McLaw's and Hood's divisions, 
reinforced by Pickett's brigades." And Young (p. 
307) quotes Anderson's orders that Wilcox and Perry's 
brigades were to render assistance, and also Wright's 
and Posy's brigades, but he received orders from Gen. 
Longstreet to stop the movement. 

The evidence in the case is conclusive. Gen. 
Fitzhugh Lee tells us: "Three of Gen. Lee's trusted 
staff officers — Taylor, Venable, and Long— have 
recorded that the plan of assault involved an attack 
by Longstreet's whole corps, supported by one-half 
of Hill's, or all of it, if he called for it. ... A con- 
summate master of war, such as Lee was, would not 
drive en masse, a column of 14,000 men ... to attack 
an army, of 100,000, and give his entering wedge no 
support." * 

There was no serious fighting after the repulse of 
the great charge on the 3d of July. During the night 
Gen. Lee withdrew his left wing from Gulp's Hill, 
and the morning of July 4th found his army in line 
of battle on Seminary Ridge. Here he stood through- 
out the day ready to receive Gen. Meade, but Meade 
made no attempt to attack him.f 

* Fitzhugh Lee's Life of Lee, p. 289. 
t Colonel Henderson, in his lecture on the Battle of Gettys- 
burg, delivered nearly twenty years after the event, falls into 



APPENDIX 251 



VII. Was Gettysburg a Federal Victory? 

Light is thrown upon this question by the testi- 
mony of several general officers given before the Con- 
gressional committee on the conduct of the war in 
the years 1864-5. Thus Gen. Sickles testified (Part 
I, page 302) that "at a council of war held on Friday 
night, July 3d, there was a pretty strong disposition 
to retreat." He further testified that the "reason 
why the enemy was not followed up was on account of 
differences of opinion whether or not we should our- 
selves retreat." Again he said, "It was by no means 
clear in the judgment of the corps commanders, as 

two serious errors. He says (p. 16), that during the night of 
July 3d, "slowly followed by his adversary, Lee fell back 
through the South Mountain passes, and away southward 
across the Potomac into Virginia." But in fact Lee did not 
begin his retreat until the night of July 4th, and did not cross 
the Potomac vmtil July 13th. On p. 14, he says, of July 3d, 
"The day opened ominously. As the sun rose, a vigorous 
attack of the Federals on Gulp's HiU, prepared during the 
night, drove Johnson's Division in panic down the hill." In- 
stead of this there were at least six hours of stern conflict after 
the sun rose, for possession of Gulp's HiU, and when Steuart's 
brigade of Johnson's Division finally yielded the hiU, they 
marched steadily down without confusion, rout or panic, in 
spite of their long hours of terrible battle and their immense 
losses. 

Elsewhere in his writings he makes the great mistake of put- 
ting the white population of the seceded States at 7,000,000, 
instead of 5,000,000, which is the figure given in the census. 

The lectvure referred to is pubUshed also in Henderson's 
Science of War, Ghapter X, pp. 285 seq. 



252 THE SOUL OF LEE 

of the General in command, whether we had won or 
not." 

Major-Gen. Butterfield, Gen. Meade's chief of 
staff, testified (page 426) that, "on the night of the 
4th of July a council of war was held to decide the 
question, 'Shall we assume the offensive,' and that 
Gen. Newton, Gen. Sedgwick, Gen. Howard, Gen. 
Birney, Gen. Pleasanton, Gen. Hays, and Gen. War- 
ren, all voted 'no' to that question." 

Major-Gen. Birney (page 367) testified that "at a 
council of war held on the night of July 4th, the 
opinion was expressed that Lee was not retreating, 
but making a flank movement." Several of the 
council (page 368) voted to retreat, but it was finally 
decided by a vote of 3 to 5 to wait twenty-four hours 
before retreating. It was stated that Gen. Meade 
did not wish to hazard a battle unless certain of vic- 
tory. However, he intended to be guided by the 
opinion of his corps commanders. As a matter of 
fact, the Federal Army remained at Gettysburg Sat- 
urday, Sunday and Monday, July 4th, 5th and 6th 
(page 369). Major-Gen. Hunt (page 453) testified 
that "on the 3d of July, after the great charge had 
failed, our troops had been very roughly handled 
when they were attacked, and for that reason it was 
not easy to make a counter-attack." He further 
says that "in his opinion there were good reasons for 
not attacking Lee that afternoon, July 3d." In a 
letter written January 12, 1888, to Gen. Webb, Gen. 
Hunt says, "Gen. Meade was right in not attempting 
a counter-attack at any stage of the battle." Maj.- 



APPENDIX 253 

Gen. Sedgwick, second in command, testified (page 
460) that "it was not expedient, in his judgment, to 
attack Lee after such a charge as this." As to the 
condition of the Federal Army, we may infer what it 
was from the testimony of Major-Gen. Warren, Chief 
of Engineers (page 380), "I should have fought on 
the morning of the 12 th of July if I could have got 
my troops to fight." 

This testimony of the corps commanders of the 
Army of the Potomac, given under oath, makes it 
very evident that the officers and men who fought 
the Army of Northern Virginia those three days of 
July, 1863, had no idea at the close of the battle that 
they had gained a victory. Gen. Meade himself, 
the Commander-in-Chief, had no contemporaneous 
delusions on the subject of Gettysburg, as is made 
manifest by a letter addressed to his wife on the 8th 
of July, 1863. In it he announced to her his appoint- 
ment of Brigadier- General in the Regular Army, 
which Halleck had forwarded to him, compHmenting 
him on the victory at Gettysburg, and Gen. Meade 
proceeds, "I send you a document received yesterday 
afternoon. It will give you pleasure, I know. Pre- 
serve it, because the terms in which the General-in- 
Chief speaks of the battle are stronger than any I 
have deemed it proper to use myself. I never claimed 
a victory, though I stated that Lee was defeated in 
his efforts to destroy my army."* This then is the 
judgment of the man who commanded the Federal 
Army at Gettysburg— he "never claimed a victory." 
* Life and Letters of General Meade, vol. II, p. 133. 



254 THE SOUL OF LEE 

To this let me add an extremely interesting state- 
ment found in the diary of Col. Freemantle, the Eng- 
lish soldier already quoted. He says (p. 287 of his 
narrative) that the ''officer at whose headquarters 
he was lodged told him that one of the enemy's de- 
spatches had been intercepted, in which the following 
words occurred: 'The noble but unfortunate 
Army of the Potomac has again been obliged 
TO retreat before superior numbers.' " 

In a correspondence with the late Gen. Sickles a 
year or two before his death I told him of this incident, 
whereupon he wrote that that might be the explana- 
tion of what Gen. Slocum, who commanded the 12 th 
Corps at Gettysburg, used to say to him before his 
death in a mysterious way, holding up two fingers, 
"I have a piece of paper about that size that would 
throw a wonderful light on what happened at Gettys- 
burg, but, as I Hke to avoid controversy, I shall not 
publish it, leaving it to my heirs to do so if they 
choose." 

Two other facts should be considered in deciding 
the question whether the Federal Army won a victory 
at Gettysburg. The first is that Lee offered battle 
on Seminary Ridge all day of July 4th, but the Fed- 
eral commander would not accept the gauge. In 
this connection it is interesting to note that Gen. 
Butterworth said that he conversed July 4th with a 
corps commander who had just left Gen. Meade, and 
that he said, "Meade says he thinks he can hold out 
here, if they attack him" (page 204). It is pretty 
clear that Gen. Meade was not of the opinion at that 



APPENDIX 255 

time that the Confederate Army had been defeated, 
and that his soHcitude was for the safety of the Army 
of the Potomac, not for the destruction of the Army of 
Northern Virginia. The other fact is that the Army 
of the Potomac did not dare to attack the Army of 
Northern Virginia from the 3d of July, 1863, till May, 
1864. Had Gettysburg been a Federal victory, this 
would have been an inexplicable fact. 



Lee's Retreat 

We come now to Gen. Lee's retreat. What was 
its cause and what was its character? Having offered 
battle all of the 4th of July on Seminary Ridge, and 
the offer having been declined, he took up his march 
the night of the 4th and the morning of the 5th for 
Virginia. 

Gen. Meade held a council of war near William.s- 
port on the 12 th of July to consider whether he should 
attack Gen. Lee in his position at Falling Waters. 
As to this we have the testimony of Major-Gen. 
Warren, Chief of Engineers, before the Congressional 
Committee already referred to (page 381). He said 
he never saw the principal corps commanders so 
unanimously in favor of not fighting as on that occa- 
sion, and Major-Gen. Sedgwick (already quoted) 
says (page 452) that "at a council of war, July 12th, 
all but two voted against attacking Lee." 

Observe now that Lee's retreat was rendered nec- 
essary, not by the condition of his army, but by the 



256 THE SOUL OF LEE 

necessity of replenishing the ammunition chests, 
which were all but exhausted (see Col. Taylor). His 
retreat was slow and deliberate. He offered battle 
again for three days at Falling Waters, near Hagers- 
town, but although Meade had been heavily rein- 
forced, and was strongly urged by Mr. Lincoln to 
attack and destroy Gen. Lee, who stood at bay with a 
swollen river in his rear, he, with the assent of his 
council of war, again decided against making such 
an attack. It is a great mistake to suppose that the 
Confederate Army was demoralized. I saw a good 
deal of different commands in the army during those 
ten days after the battle, and I can testify that they 
were full of fight and eager for an opportunity to 
redeem the mistakes made at Gettysburg. At 
length, on the night of the 13th of July, eleven days 
after the close of the battle, Gen. Lee recrossed the 
river in the face of Meade's great army. And he 
effected his crossing with such success that his entire 
loss consisted of two guns, a few wagons, and some 
500 exhausted men. 

Here let me quote the generous testimony of a 
Federal officer: "It is difficult to imagine a more dis- 
couraging situation than that in which Gen. Lee 
found himself between July 4th and 14th. Decisively 
repulsed in battle and compelled to retreat, his com- 
munications were suddenly severed by the destruction 
of his only bridge, and by floods at the fords. 

*' Yet it is clear that never once through those trying 
days did the commander or his men show any signs 
of demoralization. On the contrary, it is certain 



APPENDIX 257 

that they would have welcomed an attack on their 
entrenched Hnes about FalHng Waters." * 

Reviewing the whole campaign, I think it is plain 
that Lee lost the battle of Gettysburg by the failure 
of four splendid soldiers upon whom he had been 
accustomed to rely. His strategy was not at fault 
(of his tactics perhaps we cannot say as much); 
the orders issued were correct, and should have re- 
sulted in victory. But one thing we are compelled 
to acknowledge; Gen. Lee did not enforce that 
prompt and implicit obedience to his will as com- 
mander-in-chief which he should have done; and with- 
out which success in a great campaign can hardly be 
achieved. Gettysburg was a drawn battle it is true; 
a fight in which 68,000 men were pitted against at 
least 105,000. We may sum up the results by saying 
that on the first day the Confederates won a great 
victory; on the second day they also won two im- 
portant successes both on Gulp's Hill and at the 
Peach Orchard and in the Devil's Den; on the third 
day the great attack on the center was repulsed, and 
also that on Meade's right. 

Thus it was on the whole a drawn battle, in which 
the Federals lost many more in killed, wounded and 
prisoners than the Confederates. But a drawn battle 
under the circumstances was a defeat. Complete 
victory was essential to success and although the 
Army of Northern Virginia afterwards fought many 

* Campaign and Battle of Gettysburg, by Col. G. J. Fiebeger, 
P- 139.) 



258 THE SOUL OF LEE 

splendid battles, with magnificent courage, and often 
with great success, between July, '63, and April, '65, 
nevertheless the battle of Gettysburg does mark 
the beginning of the decline of the Confederate hopes. 
As we ponder the circumstances of that great battle 
and note how one after another the omens of success 
were turned to defeat, through no fault of our great 
commander, we can only feel that Lee, Hke Hector of 
Troy, was fighting against the supernal powers. 
It was not the will of God that we should succeed. 
And when I try to understand the ultimate cause of 
our failure, I am led to the conclusion that it was not 
the will of the Great Ruler of events that the des- 
tinies of the Anglo-Saxon race on the American 
continent should be left in the hands of those who were 
then our enemies. The Southern people were neces- 
sary then, they are necessary now for the accom- 
phshment of the designs of Providence. The Lord 
could not trust the North to fulfil His great purposes 
on this continent without the aid of the Southern 
people. Their sanity, their conservatism, their true 
Americanism were necessary elements in working out 
the great future of the race in this western land. 



FEINTED BY BBAtTNWOBTH & CO., BROOKLYN, N. T. 



